Economy Takes a Pounding during War

The statistics are grim and continue to mount: 10,000 businesses are on the brink of collapse, unemployment in the north is nearly 14 percent, workers haven’t been paid in weeks, and farmers are looking at devastated crops and distraught livestock.

From hotels and tourist attractions to farms and vineyards, businesses that slowed down or shut down completely because of the war are expected to have a ripple effect on the economy.

Property taxes have already been hiked 3 percent to support the military action and thousands of reservists were forced to leave their jobs, leaving employers in the lurch.

The Defense Ministry estimates that the conflict has cost the government 7 billion shekels ($1.5 billion). The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor has set up a task force to deal with the damages and repercussions of the war.

Restaurants and Shops

The most visible impact is on the closed restaurants and shops throughout the northern cities and towns. At some hotels and restaurants, the only patrons are foreign reporters who moved north when residents fled south or underground. From small convenience stores to pubs and restaurants, business hours were reduced and along with it, the clientele.

“I have 46 employees,” Moshe Taylor, a restaurant owner in Haifa, told Israel Today. “I have to pay them. How do you pay them?”
 
Haifa Mayor Yonah Yahav said the city’s “losses are desperate.” “We have the largest number of malls in Israel and they are empty,” he told us. “I have a friend who owns a shoe factory. But who feels like buying shoes right now? Sometimes owners opened up their stores because they wanted to be tough, but the clients didn’t show up.”

Municipalities are also grasping with new challenges. Haifa’s Deputy Mayor Tsvika Dahari said the city’s regular functions must carry on under fire like garbage collection and social services. But now they are saddled with new tasks as well.

“After a rocket falls, we must immediately repair the street,” he said. “We bring inspectors from the government to assess the damage. We also bring residents whose homes were hit to hotels so no one is ever sleeping on the street.”

Farms

Farmers say their livestock have been terrified by the continual blasts and gunfire from the border. Hens are laying eggs with an extremely brittle shell and cows are giving less milk. Many foreign workers fled south leaving fruit rotting on the trees. 

Fires sparked by rockets have burned thousands of acres of grazing land for the region’s 30,000 cattle. “The damage is severe,” said Haim Dayan, director general of the cattle-raisers union. He said cows miscarried at a significantly higher rate this season because farmers could not reach the herd regularly to provide the necessary care. 

Wine

Also hit hard by the war was Israel’s $150 million wine industry—a booming business with hundreds of wineries ranging from small enterprises to large ones which produce 10 million bottles a year. 

Moshe Haviv, CEO of Dalton Winery, is one example. He estimates a loss of 1 million shekels (more than $220,000) in one month and possibly the entire harvest. Haviv said a bumper crop was expected this year, but with the grapes ripening, workers were unable to tend the vines because of falling rockets, let alone bring in the harvest. A rocket landed in one of Dalton’s fields, burning two acres of vines. 

“Half my workers left with their families in fear of the Katyushas,” Haviv said, “and some of the others have been called up to reserve duty.” 

Lebanese Israelis Reflect on the War

ISIFIYE, northern Israel – As she watched the desperate escape from Lebanon of thousands of tourists and foreigners, Rabiye Abu Sahad remembered her own flight from the country six years ago: Keys still in the ignition, her family abandoned their car and fled on foot over the Israeli border.

“I know what its like to run from that country,” she said of her motherland.

Rabiye’s husband was in the South Lebanese Army (SLA), an Israeli-backed militia that helped provide security and fight Hizbollah during the Israeli presence in Lebanon from 1982-2000. Israel’s unilateral pullout from Lebanon in 2000 was sudden.

They didn’t have much warning, so they grabbed a bag of valuables and sped to the border where they joined a traffic jam of other SLA fighters and their families also trying to escape Hizbollah revenge. But word soon trickled down the line of cars: Hizbollah terrorists were on their way to the border. That prompted many terrified Lebanese to flee on foot. Approximately 6,000 sought refuge in Israel.

Unlike many Israeli Arabs who have expressed sympathy for Hizbollah, several Lebanese who spoke with Israel Today expressed their appreciation of Israel and even supported its assault on Hizbollah. They spoke fondly of both nations, peace and the hope to one day see their families who are just a few miles away, but just out of reach; returning to Lebanon would mean certain imprisonment and possibly death.

Abu Sahad, a Druze, is now an Israeli citizen along wither her husband and three children. She hoped Israel would finish the job and wipe out Hizbollah. “I don’t like them,” she said. “They’re the reason I had to leave.”

Still it was hard to sit on the more peaceful Israeli side while the rest of her family sat under the threat of Israeli warplanes. She watched the news all day for the first 15 days of the conflict especially after her parents’ phone lines went down. Finally she decided to put on music instead and try to get her mind off the constant worry.

“I have to hold myself together mentally for the sake of my own family,” she said. “I have no relatives here, no one to turn to.”

Ferriel Amacha, 35, cried openly as she talked about her loneliness in a safe but foreign land. She too barely escaped Lebanon with her husband. But she now frets over her family, all still in Lebanon.

Meeting family, even in a neutral country, is impossible for Lebanese in Israel. They worry about the consequences for their family in Lebanon if they are found to have had any contact with “Israelis.” The fear of Hizbollah—from spies to Katyusha rockets in the north—still dominates life for many former Lebanese.

“They’ve ruined the whole country [Lebanon],” Amacha said. “I want them out no matter how. Get rid of them and then Lebanon can be a country again.”

Rabiye hopes Israel will regain control of the south and that she would one day be able to see her family again. “I don’t see that there’s any solution to it—only God.”


 

The North Under Siege

NAHARIYA – The sun shone from a cloudless sky as crystal blue water lapped against the shore—a perfect day on the beach. Except that not one person was to be found on this stretch of Israeli coast less than 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the Lebanese border.

“It has never happened before,” said lifelong Nahariya resident David Ron. “In the past, if rockets fell here, maybe a few tourists wouldn’t come out for one day, maybe 10 days. But residents would be out. Never have we had a situation in Israel where residents lived in shelters for weeks on end.”

Unlike towns further south, Nahariya did not have sirens to warn of incoming rockets until nearly a month into the attacks. Ron drove around the city with one window open to keep the glass from shattering in case of a blast. 

With more than 900 houses in the coastal town damaged by Hizbollah’s Katyusha rockets, residents—who are no strangers to terrorism—disappeared along with the tourists. It was impossible to tell whether people were in their homes or shelters or had skipped town altogether. Almost every shop was locked shut.

In the first month of fighting, 3,600 rockets forced the 1.5 million residents of northern Israel to live in shelters or head south for refuge. Israeli officials estimated the number of displaced Israelis at 300,000, some driving for days until they found a place to stay. With at least 150 rockets raining down on Israel on an average day, Hizbollah changed the frontline of the Arab-Israeli conflict, hitting areas as far south as Afula, 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the border. 

An Eerie Routine

Israeli army Major Elliot Chodoff, responsible for the home-front in the north, said the situation is full of psychological challenges because rockets can hit any time, anywhere. “There are no easy answers,” Chodoff told Israel Today, adding that the aim is to find a workable routine in a crisis situation. “What we’re trying to do is help people cope at the highest possible level.”

To enable residents to shop for food and other necessities, stores adopted a wartime schedule, opening each day for specified hours. Residents described an eerie pattern of life under siege: Rocket attacks begin in the late morning and then subside, allowing people to scamper out from their shelters, shop, walk and have a drink in the humid sea air. Then residents head back into the shelters, ready for the next round of attacks that inevitably occur in the late afternoon.

At one convenience store, which stayed open throughout the conflict providing refuge for war-hardened Israelis, older men and their sons yawned at the predictability of the Hizbollah war schedule while maintaining their favorite pastime—drinking coffee, smoking and now, talking about the war.

“I’ve never gone into a shelter in my life. This is not the first war I’ve been through,” said Haim Dentess, 68, explaining why he sat outside on a deceptively peaceful day. “People here are strong. We know why we’re at war—we want peace. They want to kill us and we know the reason: We are strong.”

Though Dentess and his cadre of tough men defied the government recommendation to stay in shelters at all times, they were also disheartened by the situation. It was summertime, the height of the tourist season that props up the city’s economy, and yet stores were barred shut and the promenade deserted.

The Silver Lining in Adversity

The rockets that hit homes wrought devastating damage. A side hit to the exterior of one house shifted everything inside. Drawers spilled out of the cabinets, plates and glasses smashed onto the floor and meat rotted in the open freezer. An uneaten baguette remained on the table. The residents left in a hurry and did not return. 

Another pockmarked apartment building was guarded since all of its windows and doors shattered in a rocket hit. Residents have long been in shelters, but insurance requires that the building be secured 24 hours a day to prevent looting.

Despite the damage, danger and disruption, the war in this city testifies of two miracles: most rockets landed in streets, yards and fields, and with most residents in shelters, the death toll was relatively low considering the number of attacks. 

The View from Arab Towns

The mood in Israeli Arab towns in the north was much different and, in fact, belied war at all. Not one store was closed and life didn’t skip a beat despite daily sirens warning residents of incoming rockets. 

“When a rocket falls on an Arab village, it’s the opposite [of Jewish towns]. Everyone goes to the rocket, not from it,” said Alhan Awad, a resident of Kfar Yasif. “People sit on the roof of their house and watch.”

While many Arabs maintain anti-Israel views, Lebanese Israelis, who fled Lebanon in 2000 when Israel pulled out, are pulling for the Jewish state to eradicate Hizbollah (see page 6).

“They are terrorists, killers,” said Johnny Aboud, who now owns a shwarma (meat sliced off a spit) shop in Kfar Yasif. “Nobody wants Israel to lose.” 

Aboud lived in a Christian section of Beirut. He still has family there, but hadn’t been able to contact them since Israel began bombing the city. Aboud said Lebanon will be much better off without Hizbollah.

“All of the government is afraid of Hizbollah,” he said. “Who has the weapons now? Only the Hizbollah.”

Harried in Haifa

At Haifa University, overseas students cleared out of town after the first rocket landed. Final exams were postponed and only a few Israeli students were left in the dorms.

“One student, a South American girl, left immediately after the first Katyusha fell,” said Moti, a student at the school. “I said to her, ‘You’re obviously not from here. We are used to this—this is our reality.’”

During the height of the rocket attacks in Israel’s third-largest city, restaurants and coffee shops were closed, or if open, were nearly empty.

“All during the month of the World Cup, it was busy. We even took reservations,” said Moshe Taylor, a restaurant owner who was determined to maintain a semblance of normalcy. “We were full, extra full, even two to three hours before the game.” “Now,” he gestured at the trendy but empty sushi bar, “we have a lot of place.”

Taylor said that his bar-restaurant depends on the three summer months to make money for the whole year. But in one month, business dropped 50 percent, his Asian workers left the country or headed south and his barmen and waitresses went to Tel Aviv.

“If I had kids I’d take them away from here,” he said. “But for me the show must go on.”