Monica Lehrer Zeidman just wanted to drink her coffee on the balcony of her new apartment in Naharia's new neighborhood -- known as "Green Naharia" -- and enjoy the morning sun as usual. But just when she leaned comfortably on the glass railing, coffee cup in hand, a Katyusha rocket unexpectedly struck her building. The rocket broke forcefully through the roof above the balcony and hit the 40-year-old woman. She died instantly.

Now Naharia, a city only a few kilometers away from the Lebanese border, seems like a ghost town. Police patrols use loudspeakers to call on the residents to assemble in bomb shelters until the all-clear signal is given. Many people have left the city, heading southward. "Thirty percent of the 50,000 inhabitants have left," claims Chaim, a real estate broker who helps people find apartments in the city center. He says the exodus has led to a traffic jam on the exit road that leads to the safe south.

Many had suitcases ready on their roofs, Chaim says, adding that others didn't take the time to pack any necessities before leaving the city. They fled quickly from the more than 100 Katyusha rockets that hit the north yesterday alone. They don't want to come back before the situation has calmed down. "And that could take a long time," he says.

Naharia -- a popular summer resort with "a relaxing, almost European atmosphere," as a local tourism ad puts it -- was hit the hardest by the barrage of Katyushas. The street cafés on the boulevard, usually filled to capacity, have closed; the chairs have been placed on the tables. The hotels are empty. Nothing is open except a small snack bar and the "Penguin" restaurant.

New customers

The waitress in the Penguin says a rocket hit a spot just a few meters away from her house that morning: "First I heard a loud whistling and hissing sound, then the deafening, earth-shaking sound of the impact." But she refuses to go to the bomb shelter. "It's cramped and noisy there," she says. Mosche, who runs the snack bar, knows his family is safe in the shelter. He's selling Coca-Cola and sandwiches to the numerous reporters who are reporting from Naharia. "Now I'm catering to journalists instead of to tourists," he notes sardonically.

Most of the people now bustling over Hagaaton Boulevard, the coastal town's promenade, are journalists and politicians. They inspect the cone-shaped crater left by the rocket that hit the town center early in the morning. "We were lucky there," says Ami Soglobeck, whose family owns a sausage factory known across Israel. He points at the crater and moves his hand upward to suggest the angle at which the rocket arrived.

"The rocket flew right between those two houses," he says, pointing to two four-storey buildings. "A few meters to the side and it would have been a catastrophe." Because things turned out the way they did, no one was injured here; only property was damaged. The café "The Old Man and the Sea" has been destroyed. The windows of the nearby shops are shattered and cars parked in the vicinity have been damaged. According to Soglobeck, the residents were also lucky that the rocket hit so early: "If it had arrived half an hour later, several people would probably have died."

Politicians are flocking to Naharia in order to demonstrate their solidarity with the residents -- and also to appear in front of scenes of devastation in order to make a political statement, of course. Political hard-liner Effi Eitlan speaks these words into the microphone, for example: "We won't tolerate that an Israeli city should look like Naharia. Hezbollah has crossed the red line and is responsible for the consequences. We won't stop until the Shiite militias have been driven out of southern Lebanon."

Eitlan's populist argument is that what is happening here proves there can be no political solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. "Six years ago, we retreated from Lebanon -- and this is the result," he says, pointing to the images of destruction around him.

Israel's minister for domestic security, Avi Dichter, also makes an appearance on the city square, where shards of broken glass are being swept up. "Hezbollah must now be taught a lesson it will remember for 60 years," he says. "We will not allow the Lebanese population to live in peace while we have to live in bomb shelters. If they want to make our life hell, then we don't want them to enjoy paradise."

A sense of crisis

There is a sense of crisis in Naharia's hospital. Many patients are being cared for in an underground section of the hospital -- a large basement that can hold 250 people and whose ceiling has been reinforced with concrete. The emergency hospital was completed three years ago and is now being used for the first time. Right now, 40 Israelis who were injured by Katyushas are being looked after. "The rockets hit a wall that was only a few meters away from me," says on patient. "The windows, the doors, everything was smashed, and the shrapnel injured me. But I think God helped me avoid a worse fate."

The Israeli attacks on Lebanon are being televised and can be watched in Naharia's hospital. "We have to change the rules of the game in Lebanon," says a 30-year-old policeman who caught a piece of shrapnel in his left foot. What exactly the "new rules" should look like he doesn't know, however. All he says this: "Hassan Nasrallah (Hezbollah's leader) was sweating when he held his speech. And he knows he has good reason to be breaking sweat." And then he adds: "We demand retaliation. We mustn't show any compassion towards the Lebanese, even if they suffer."

In the meantime Sagi and Dalit have sat down in front of the house where Monica Lehrer was killed by a rocket only a few hours earlier. Both are about 30 years old and have a three-year-old son. They've left the shelter because the police have given the all-clear signal, and also to "get some fresh air."

Sagi says his family won't leave Naharia despite the risks. "In the end, you can't escape your fate," he says to justify his decision to stay. "You could just as well become a terror victim in New York or London." But this kind of passive stance doesn't hold for politics, Sagi adds in a serious tone while his son plays on the sidewalk. Sagi says the government is responsible for protecting the population from terrorism. "That's why we have to invade southern Lebanon again. We have to secure order and then stay there for ever and ever," Sagi demands. But his wife Dalit, who has been sitting silently until now, protests vehemently when she hears this: "Then our son would have to be stationed in Lebanon for 15 years. I wouldn't want that to happen."