Israelis return to broken houses and lives in limbo

NAHARIYA, Israel -- Lydisia Kadosh was watching television two weeks ago when she realized that the house blazing away on the screen was her own.

The three-story building in this northern Israeli town had just been hit by a Katyusha rocket, fired across the border by Hezbollah guerrillas during the 34-day war that entered a cease-fire Monday. Kadosh, her husband, and four children were not home at the time; they had left Nahariya in the first week of the fighting to stay with friends and family.

``I saw my house exploding and going up in flames," Kadosh said yesterday as she inspected the damage. ``My daughter burst into tears when she saw the pictures."

The family returned home this week to find the house uninhabitable, with a huge hole in the roof and smashed glass and furniture everywhere.

The Kadosh family was among an estimated two-thirds of the 51,000 residents of Nahariya who fled the deadly rocket bombardments. The seaside resort, like other border towns battered by Hezbollah rockets, was getting back to normal yesterday after weeks as a virtual ghost town, when the silence was punctuated only by the wailing of air raid sirens and the explosions.

``We have been refugees for a month, moving from place to place, and we are still refugees because we cannot live there while it is in this state," she said. ``The municipality has given us a place in a hotel, but only for a short time."

By yesterday, most residents had returned and traffic filled the streets once more. Long lines formed at banks and post offices as residents struggled to sort out their personal affairs after a month in limbo.

Neighbors and workers strolled the streets in something of a daze, searching out friends they had not seen for weeks and viewing the blackened and damaged buildings hit by rockets.

In the basement of the Carlton Hotel, tax officials labored from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., recording information from thousands of people about damaged homes, cars, and businesses. Some, like Kadosh, were given hotel vouchers while their homes were being repaired.

Many of the residents complained that the government compensation procedure was overly bureaucratic and too slow.

Nissim Assor, 57, had nowhere to escape to, so he remained at home in the working-class Kiryat Assor neighborhood during the conflict with his wife and five children. Two weeks ago, a Katyusha landed in their front garden, blowing out the windows and sending shards of metal through the door and walls.

``We escaped by a miracle," said Assor, picking a piece of jagged shrapnel from the pages of a recipe book where it had lodged after piercing a door, a cupboard, and the hard cover of the book. ``Each day we find more pieces in the kitchen cupboards. We have no windows, blinds or doors. We're still waiting for someone to come and fix it."

His neighbor, Yigal Buskila, 36, also had nowhere to go, but after three days of terror he picked up his wife and 5-year-old son and headed south anyway.

``My wife and son were terribly scared. They were trembling all the time. My son still can't sleep," said Buskila, surveying the wreckage of his tiny den and smashed TV screen.

``We just turned up in cities all over the country and contacted the mayor in each place, and he found us families who were willing to take us in. We stayed a few days in each place, like refugees. People were wonderful," he said.

Around the corner, a huge banner outside the Diesenhaus Unitours travel agency declared ``The windows are broken -- but we're not!"

Managing Director Nir Shilo kept the office open through the conflict, but sent his staff home to work by phone and Internet, or to stay with staff at the company's branches elsewhere in Israel.

Shilo was at work when one rocket landed across the street, causing minor damage. A second rocket struck the office on a Saturday, when he was at home.

Yesterday the computers, telephones, and electricity were working again, but the windows were in shards, waiting to be repaired.

``I had to stay. I believe in fate. Part of the struggle in this war was to show our enemies that even with 5,000 rockets falling in a month, the economy and life goes on," he said.

A few miles up the road, in the village of Shlomi, Shlomo Lugasi sat on his porch yesterday enjoying the sunshine, as he has done throughout the war.

At age 104, Lugasi probably was the oldest Israeli to survive the onslaught.

He refused to leave the village he helped establish half a century ago.

``It's much nicer now that it's quiet, without these rockets whistling over my head and exploding," Lugasi said. ``I believe in this peace and I believe Israel wants peace, but I don't trust Nasrallah," he said, referring to the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. ``Nasrallah is just looking for trouble. But he'll lose in the end."