Resuscitating Israel’s Destitute North Should Begin Now

The deadly conflict between Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Israel has entered a new phase, as the threat of all-out war between the Jewish State and the Lebanese terror group looms.

Amid escalating tensions, Israel and its supporters can take immediate steps to equip Israel’s most vulnerable northern border communities with sorely needed defenses, paving the way for their eventual renewal.

Kiryat Shmona — Israel’s largest evacuated northern town and the economic hub of the northern Galilee — should be prioritized.

The Israeli government updated its longstanding war goals last week, vowing to return tens of thousands of displaced Israelis from northern communities to their homes. The announcement was followed by an unprecedented attack on the Hezbollah terror network, whereby thousands of personal communication devices belonging to Hezbollah members — beepers and walkie-talkies — appeared to be remotely detonated in what may be the biggest and most wide-spread simultaneous counter-terrorism precision strike in history.

Hezbollah began attacking Israel on October 8, 2023, forcing Jerusalem to evacuate over 40 communities along its northern border, while the Jewish State was still counting its dead and struggling to establish the number of missing persons from Hamas’ invasion and massacre in Israel’s south on October 7.

Hezbollah has been openly planning a similar attack and invasions of Israel for years. Mass evacuations of Israel’s northern border communities were the only way to ensure that other massacres and hostage scenarios would not play out along its border with Lebanon.

Given the lessons learned from October 7, and the IDF’s state of high readiness in the north, it is unlikely that Hezbollah could carry out an October 7-like invasion today. But the majority of Israel’s over 1.5 million residents remain vulnerable to Hezbollah rockets; terrorists in Lebanon have fired over 7,500 rockets at Israel since the war began.

Over the past decade, Tehran has spent billions of dollars building Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal. Today, the terror group is estimated to have more than 150,000 rockets, the vast majority of which are short-range rockets that would exclusively target Israeli border communities. Yet the most vulnerable communities in the north — including Kiryat Shmona — lack the means to withstand this threat.

Kiryat Shmona is situated in a lush green valley, surrounded by Lebanese territory on three sides. In 2021, the city celebrated a newly-launched innovation center — a venture capital funded food-tech research and development hub, which promised tens of thousands of jobs in the coming years. Before the war, there were 90 start-ups in Kiryat Shmona. Today, the majority of those companies have moved their operations south, away from the rocket fire — a devastating blow to the regional economy.

According to Ariel Frisch, Kiryat Shmona’s deputy director of security, the town’s population was 25,000 before the war, but only had sufficient bomb shelters for 50% of the residents. A school principal in normal times, Fricsh said that his town had absorbed over 750 direct hits on infrastructure since the war began, damaging homes, schools, and kindergartens.

A small number of Israelis have returned to their border communities, willing to face the rocket fire in order to regain some sense of normalcy. However, many others have no plans to return to the north. A poll conducted by the Kiryat Shmona municipality indicated that 14% percent of residents would not return to the town. A further 34% said that their decision to return would depend on the security outlook. The bottom line: providing security to Kiryat Shmona is critical to the town’s survival and to the future of the northern Galilee.

Israel must strengthen the ability of Kiryat Shmona to withstand rocket attacks, providing a safer alternative for the people who are ready to return home. The growing community of Sderot, near the Gaza border, is evidence that — if adequate protections are in place — many Israelis are willing to live under the threat of rockets (although it remains to be seen if this trend will continue in the long-term after October 7). But Jerusalem can take key steps now to help make that happen by investing in a more formidable security infrastructure.

The best short-term solution is to install what Israelis call miguniot — Hebrew for standalone concrete boxes with metal doors that residents can truck into Kiryat Shmona and place close to a home, business, or school, providing limited but essential protection from projectiles.

Domestically manufactured miguniot that are built in various sizes for different capacities, are advertised for sale on the Internet for anywhere between $7,000 and $40,000 and can be delivered within three weeks.

The utility of miguniot is limited though: Israelis in border communities only have 15 seconds to reach them in the face of incoming fire. Accordingly, Israelis must position miguniot strategically to be effective.

The better solution for hardening communities in the mid to long-term is building additions of reinforced concrete safe rooms attached directly to homes, schools, clinics, and other public spaces that residents can reach even faster. These safe rooms can be air-conditioned and wired to the home’s electricity, making them suitable for sheltering in place for longer periods of time.

Safe rooms are a more expensive, but more effective solution, and costs can range between $27,000 and $60,000 per unit. They also take longer to build, involve an architect and permitting, and require a team that is willing to work onsite to construct the safe rooms.

Israeli leaders should embark on a campaign to raise money for both types of these shelters, or find another way to allocate the funds immediately. Even if Hezbollah is trounced in a future war, the rocket threat isn’t going anywhere. Jerusalem should galvanize Diaspora Jewry and other supporters of Israel to help.

The work of hardening Kiryat Shmona must begin now. Lessons learned from Sderot and other communities that have thrived under rocket fire for over a decade in Israel can be applied. The longer Kiryat Shmona and other towns remain empty, the harder it will be to bring life back to the entire region.

Enia Krivine is the senior director of the Israel Program and the FDD National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow her on X at @EKrivine.