Jerusalem, 13 April, 2026 (TPS-IL) — I find Batsheva lying in her bed in an underground shelter in Kiryat Shmona, the television on beside her, a talk show murmuring in the background. There are no windows, no natural light, only the steady hum of fluorescent bulbs casting a pale glow across the room. The shelter is clean and tidy, and a row of neatly made beds stretches along the wall. Batsheva, her gray hair visible above a pink blanket pulled up to her chest, is alone with the TV. It strikes me that she hasn’t seen the sun for over a month.
The elderly woman has remained inside a public shelter since the fighting began in early March. She leaves only briefly to shower at a neighbor’s home above the shelter and says fear keeps her from returning to her house up the street. “I have a bad feeling when I go out, that if I go out, something will happen to me,” she explains.
I visited Kiryat Shmona, the northern Israeli city that has returned to a rhythm of relentless sirens and shelter life after fighting with Hezbollah resumed in early March. Streets are quiet, businesses shuttered, and most encounters happen in protected spaces rather than homes or cafés.
Before the war, Kiryat Shmona was a vibrant city of 24,000. Now, an estimated half of the population has not returned after being evacuated in 2023.
I spoke with several residents who have remained or recently returned, each describing a different way of living with fear, attachment, and uncertainty.
Bruria, 61, is staying in a shelter with her grandson, a first-grader. Her children’s restaurant has been closed for months. She was evacuated in 2023 when Hezbollah began firing rockets at northern Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 attack. Bruria vowed she won’t evacuate again.
“We dream of surviving and being resilient, but they should go all the way and not have a ceasefire in the middle and another two years of war. I won’t leave Kiryat Shmona because I was born here, this is my home, and I’m not willing to leave it,” she insists.
Batsheva, a resident of Kiryat Shmona, in a bomb shelter she has not left for over a month, on April 12, 2026. Photo by Yoav Dudkevitch/TPS-IL
Her grandson quietly sits at a table, intently watching an animated panda on a tablet.
“The child is here alone, it’s hard for him, he doesn’t meet friends,” Bruria said.
Pausing, Bruria turns to her grandson and asks the name of his school.
“I don’t know,” he shrugs, without taking his eyes off the screen.
As for a ceasefire, she says, “We are here and will survive in shelters and whatever is necessary, until the end. This time we are not giving up.”
Esther sits with a cat in her northern Israeli hometown of Kiryat Shmona on April 12, 2026. Photo by Yoav Dudkevitch/TPS-IL
Evyatar is a young father of two who returned from evacuation a year ago. I find him and his family outside his parents’ house, where they are meeting a cab. The family is heading to Tiberias for a four-day “vacation” that all residents of the city are eligible for. Why his parents’ house? With no safe room in his home, Evyatar’s family alternates between his parents’ house and his wife’s parents’ house.
“We returned from evacuation a year ago, and again in the reality that we have to go out to freshen up in a hotel for a few days. We don’t want to evacuate,” he says. “Why not leave? Good people. I was born here, my wife, my parents, my grandparents, we are rooted here. It is hard to leave a house that you love and are happy in.”
Suitcases and a baby stroller were stuffed into the trunk. Five minutes after the cab disappeared from view, there was a siren followed by a boom overhead. Kiryat Shmona’s reality stops for no one.
Esther, in her sixties, has lived in the city all her life and says she will not evacuate again. “I was in a good hotel for a year and a half, but I lived out of suitcases,” she says. “We only need security here — everything else is a good life.”
Boarded up businesses in downtown Kiryat Shmona, Israel’s northernmost town, on April 12, 2026. Photo by Yoav Dudkevitch/TPS-IL
By now, it is late afternoon. At an indoor sheltered playground, about a dozen children move between slides, padded mats, and various games, their voices echoing off reinforced walls. A single mother, who asked not to be named, sits nearby as her daughter plays on the equipment.
“I’ve been here since the morning,” she says with tired resignation.
The mother teaches special education classes over Zoom and says her daughter spends hours at a time in front of screens.
“The kids go from house to house, to the TV, to the tablet, to the phone,” she says.
Kiryat Shmona is the northernmost point in Israel, and she says the noise of war is constant.
“It’s terrible to live like this. The noise, the planes, I have no problem with us shooting there, but the noise is terrible. The six-year-old girl can tell which shots are ours and which are theirs, which are interceptors, which are UAVs.”
in Kiryat Shmona, the war is never really out of earshot.