JERUSALEM (AP) _ When I arrived in Israel one year ago, Ariel Sharon was the prime minister, Hamas was a radical Palestinian opposition group, and Israeli troops were just leaving Gaza — and long gone from Lebanon. Its become a cliché to say there is never a dull moment in the Middle East. Even so, it’s hard to recall a … Read More
JERUSALEM — Israel’s shadowy security service is looking for a few good geeks. Normally shrouded in secrecy, the Shin Bet launched its first-ever public recruitment drive last week, unveiling a slick Web site and buying online ads in Israel and abroad in a campaign aimed at attracting topflight computer programmers to its cutting-edge tech division. The campaign is aimed at … Read More
KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel (AP) — Life slowly returned to the battered Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona on Tuesday, as residents emerged from grimy bomb shelters and began cleaning up the wreckage caused by more than a month of Hezbollah rocket attacks. The streets in this border town, empty for weeks, filled up with cars. Long-closed stores opened their doors. Buses … Read More
Tuesday, Aug. 15, 7 p.m. local METULLA, Israel – The route from Kiryat Shemona to Metulla is a 5-mile stretch of winding, uphill road. I’ve driven it dozens of times in the past three weeks. Today, for the first time, I drove it without fear. This war ended just as suddenly as it began, and at no place is the … Read More
KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel — Some residents emerged warily from their bunkers in this border town Monday as a cease-fire with Hezbollah brought an eery silence to the surrounding hills. A few cars returned to the roads and traffic lights began working again, but life was far from normal. Unlike in Lebanon, where war refugees were flooding back to their homes, … Read More
KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel (AP) — Shimon Almakayiss, a 25-year-old cerebral palsy patient, is curled in a ball, his feet twitching as he sucks his thumb and rests his head on his mother’s lap. After four weeks in bomb shelters, his medication has run out, and his mother is in despair. “When I call the welfare services no one answers,” said … Read More
KFAR GILADI,Israel (AP) — A defiant Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with rockets Sunday after rejecting a U.S.-French truce proposal, killing at least 15 people. Israel also struck hard, killing 14 in Lebanon as both sides tried to take advantage of the days before a U.N. resolution is put to a vote. In the deadliest attack on Israelis in this war, a … Read More
MAALOT-TARSHIHA, Israel (AP) — A siren wailed Saturday afternoon and Yousef Yaroni sprinted toward a bomb shelter. It’s a drill the grocer repeats several times a day. He knows that, as a Christian Arab, he is not the target of the Hezbollah attacks, but it makes no difference to him. “I feel like every Jewish citizen in Israel,” he said. … Read More
MOUNT NAFTALI FOREST, Israel (AP) — Huge swaths of forests and fields across northern Israel have been scorched by thousands of Hezbollah rocket strikes over the past three weeks, and experts said it would take nature at least 50 years to recover. Charred branches stuck out of the ground like grave markers at the Mount Naftali Forest overlooking Kiryat Shemona, … Read More
KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel (AP) — Yossi Vaknin says he’s got rocket-dodging down to a science since being forced underground by Hezbollah missiles. Sitting outside public shelter 110, in a tank-top and flip-flops, he smokes a cigarette and glances at his watch. It’s almost 4 p.m. “This is their time,” he says. Sure enough, just moments later, there is the familiar … Read More
ON THE ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER — Some 20 paratroopers sit on the grass, skullcaps on their heads and M-16 rifles lying gently on their laps, and sing the traditional tunes marking the end of the Sabbath. They have plenty of reason for prayer, to give thanks that they survived the fighting in Lebanon and to mourn their slain commander. “Yiftach used … Read More
METULLA, Israel (AP) – Lior Weinberg shakes his head and gazes out to where his apples, peaches, pears and plums rot on the ground in front of him. In Israel’s northernmost community, a little finger of land that juts into Lebanon, farmers like Weinberg haven’t fled to escape war or rocket fire. But still they are being hit hard, because … Read More
KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel (AP) — Israelis in northern Israel welcomed the Sabbath at synagogues and with traditional festive meals on Friday, but the continuing threat of Hezbollah rockets and an uncertain future loomed large. Abraham Weitzman, 58, said services at the “Beit Yaakov” synagogue in Kiryat Shemona would proceed as usual, only faster. “Today, they’ll be less singing,” he said, … Read More
ON THE ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER — Lt. Yaron Genkin never saw the Hezbollah guerrillas he and his men were fighting. What the 21-year-old tank commander did see were explosions all around him, and two friends killed before his eyes. But three days later, after attending their funerals, the battered and exhausted soldier says he is ready to go back across the … Read More
KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel (AP) — Israel’s prime minister expressed “deep regret” Wednesday over the killings of four U.N. observers in an airstrike and dismay over U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s accusation the bombing was “apparently deliberate.” Ireland filed an official protest with Israel alleging that its senior U.N. observer in Lebanon made six telephoned warnings about Israeli shelling near a U.N. … Read More