KIRYAT SHMONA — Driving along Tel-Hai Street, the main commercial strip of this northern city, storefronts were open on a recent weekday afternoon, and cafes and shawarma stands were busy.

But just beyond the front line of shops, a different picture emerged, showing the pain that the “capital of the north” has endured through more than two years of war.

Some commercial areas were almost completely shuttered due to a lack of customers. Temporary missile shelters, known in Hebrew as miguniot, have been erected on virtually every street corner, providing emergency respite when sirens give residents just 15 seconds to run for cover from Hezbollah rockets. A high-tech incubator near the top of the strip, once bustling with innovation, is now nearly empty.

There aren’t many damaged homes around anymore, since most of those hit during the 2024 war have already been repaired, residents say. The latest round of fighting in March and April, currently halted by a fragile ceasefire as of this writing, has caused some new damage, farther off the strip. But the holes in residents’ lives, and in the local economy, will take much longer to fix.

“Before the war, this area was full of people, and businesses were making good money,” said Eldar, a barber, sitting outside his salon waiting for customers. “Now, almost all of the stores in this area are closed, the city is dead, and no one goes out at night.”

More than 900 days after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack that triggered the war — and after repeated rounds of fighting along the northern border — recovery in Israel’s north remains uneven. While some areas are rebounding, others, particularly communities near the Lebanon border like Kiryat Shmona, continue to face deep economic and demographic challenges.

“When you talk about the housing market in the north, you really have to divide it into two categories,” said Nimrod Bousso, chief editor at the Israeli Real Estate Center website. “In the places on the front lines of fighting, where people were evacuated during the war, real estate activity is very low, and most construction projects are on hold. But for areas that aren’t being directly targeted, like many towns in the Golan Heights, agents say that sales volume has returned to normal.”

In those places, Bousso said, “there is a sense that we are getting back to some sort of routine.”

Slow recovery in the Galilee

Kiryat Shmona, just over a mile from the border, is in the first category of very slow recovery. Shortly after Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel evacuated the city’s 24,000 residents in anticipation of military conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Government stipends paid for them to relocate to homes in other........

© The Times of Israel