On a recent evening, Ilana Binyamin sits outside a shop and basks in the relief of returning to her own home in the city Israelis know as “the capital of the north.” Kiryat Shmona is just 1 mile from Israel’s border with Lebanon. Mrs. Binyamin says she relishes the place for its fresh alpine air, views of the Golan Heights, and small-town feel, where “everyone knows one another.”
Life in Kiryat Shmona is a lot more quiet than it used to be. And after three years of war, some Israelis worry it’s too quiet.
Israel’s government ordered an unprecedented evacuation of this northern border city and neighboring towns following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack from Gaza. On the following day, Hezbollah started launching rockets at Israel from Lebanon in support of Hamas. More than 60,000 Israeli residents living within 5 kilometers (about 3 miles) of the border were ordered to leave home.
Why We Wrote This
Despite government investment and an influx of ideologically motivated newcomers, Kiryat Shmona, Israel’s “capital of the north,” is struggling to recover financially and demographically. Its mayor warns that the city on Lebanon’s border is on the verge of collapse.
Most thought they would be gone for a few days, a few weeks at most. But today, almost 40% of Kiryat Shmona’s 24,000 residents have yet to return to their homes. And of those who have returned, many are older and more economically disadvantaged.
Ilana Binyamin sits on a main shopping street in Kiryat Shmona, July 29, 2026. She returned home in December 2025 after spending 18 months as an evacuee from the border city with Lebanon. She says she is thrilled to be living in her home city again.
For Mrs. Binyamin, the desire to come back here never went away. During the 18 months that she and her husband lived in a Tel Aviv hotel, she found a ritual that sustained her.
Every two weeks, despite the rattling booms of Hezbollah rocket barrages overhead and fears that the Iranian-backed militia might cross the border and take Israeli citizens hostage, Mrs. Binyamin boarded the No. 845 bus for the three-and-a-half-hour journey to Kiryat Shmona.
Often the sole passenger remaining by the time the bus reached the empty streets here, she would hurry to her apartment. It was too dangerous to linger.
“I would water the flowers in the garden, dust the furniture, sit in the living room. Then I’d turn around and get back on the bus,” says Mrs. Binyamin, who moved back to Kiryat Shmona in April 2025. That was after Israel reached a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon and deemed it safe enough for residents to return.
When the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran in February of this year, Mrs. Binyamin and her neighbors were once again under fire from Hezbollah. For six weeks, they spent most of their time in bomb shelters.
Things are far from back to normal. A once-bustling tech start-up center stands mostly empty. Nearby restaurants and cafés along a main shopping street have customers again, but about half the street’s businesses remain shuttered.
Despite government investment and some newcomers who have relocated here for ideological reasons to help strengthen this working-class city, Kiryat Shmona is struggling to recover financially and demographically. And there are warnings, including from its mayor, that the place is on the verge of collapse.
Israeli soldiers help a woman as she gets on a bus to evacuate from the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel, Oct. 20, 2023. The Israeli military announced it would evacuate the border city just one day after three residents were injured by cross-border fire from militants in Lebanon.
“It doesn’t matter how things end on the Lebanese front or the Iranian front if we’ve lost a city in the State of Israel,” Mayor Avichai Stern shouted at government officials during a hearing in March, about a month into the Iran war.
Those comments went viral in Israel and helped bring the city’s distress home to the rest of the country. Because they are so close to Lebanon, residents only have seconds to seek shelter when they hear air-raid sirens go off.
Pounding his fists on the table, the mayor accused the government of not providing residents with enough bomb shelters almost three years into a multifront war.
“You don’t send a soldier to battle without a bulletproof vest, right? Why are you putting civilians on the front line without protection?” he said.
For their part, government officials have blamed Mayor Stern for delays with assistance.
Israel has earmarked some $6 billion in support for border communities, with funding for improved transportation to new employment opportunities. Residents of towns and villages near Kiryat Shmona depend on government support for banking, healthcare, and access to government services.
“All the many resources put into the city’s evacuation need to be put into facilitating the return to it,” says Yotam Degani, chief development officer of the city’s community centers. He compares the city to a broken glass that now must be put together again.
“It needs to be a national project, not just a local one,” he says. “The response needs to be immediate, not in a few years,” he adds, in order to retain residents who returned and encourage others to follow.
Built in the 1950s just after Israel’s founding to absorb newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Morocco, this frontier city has been through waves of unrest, weathering cross-border attacks first by Palestinian militants and later by Hezbollah.
The trauma of such an extended displacement and the toll of ongoing uncertainty is seen in a sadness that settles over residents’ faces.
Michael Uriel Avraham walks in the mostly empty streets of Kiryat Shmona, July 29, 2026. He is among those who have returned following a mass evacuation of the city, but plans to eventually move back to the center of the country in search of better security and job prospects.
Among them is Michael Uriel Avraham, a young tech worker named after his Moroccan immigrant great-grandfather who helped build Kiryat Shmona’s city hall. Even though he always had planned to stay, Mr. Avraham says he plans to move to central Israel, where he was evacuated, where he felt safer, and where jobs are more plentiful.
“My home was bombed twice,” he says. “It’s scary to be here. And you never know when the next attack will come. Meanwhile, it does not seem like we will neutralize Hamas or Hezbollah anytime soon, or even the Iranians.”
New energy and regional cooperation
Iris Ben Shalom, director of economic development at the Upper Galilee Regional Council, which represents Kiryat Shmona’s neighboring villages and towns, says the war and displacement led local leaders to realize intensive cooperation is needed to rehabilitate the area.
“We are not arguing over resources – we are joining hands,” she says from her office, overlooking forested hills.
A centerpiece of this rebuilding effort is the planned expansion of neighboring Tel-Hai College into the new University of Kiryat Shmona. The goal is to draw thousands of students, faculty, and families to the region, anchors for long-term population growth.
Tania Kravtsov stands next to a stream in a park in Kiryat Shmona on July 29. She moved here several months ago out of idealism and a desire to help rebuild the embattled border city, the “capital” of northern Israel.
In the meantime, young people like Tania Kravtsov are among the new arrivals. A Ukrainian-born tour guide who immigrated to Israel as a child, she found herself without work because of the war and then found employment here doing community education about local rivers.
“I’m here with new eyes, new energy,” she says. “It feels important to be here, to put down roots.”
On a recent evening, a procession of people dressed in white wound their way up a steep hill to the sound of religious music. They were heading toward a local synagogue to dedicate a new Torah scroll written in honor of the matriarch of a local family.
“It’s an exciting moment after these three years of war and the period not living here. We are so happy we have reached this moment,” says Nofar Alon, granddaughter of the family. “It symbolizes hope, that we are looking forward to the future.”
OUTPUT ENDING
On a recent evening, Ilana Binyamin sits outside a shop and basks in the relief of returning to her own home in the city Israelis know as “the capital of the north.” Kiryat Shmona is just 1 mile from Israel’s border with Lebanon. Mrs. Binyamin says she relishes the place for its fresh alpine air, views of the Golan Heights, and small-town feel, where “everyone knows one another.”
Life in Kiryat Shmona is a lot more quiet than it used to be. And after three years of war, some Israelis worry it’s too quiet.
Israel’s government ordered an unprecedented evacuation of this northern border city and neighboring towns following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack from Gaza. On the following day, Hezbollah started launching rockets at Israel from Lebanon in support of Hamas. More than 60,000 Israeli residents living within 5 kilometers (about 3 miles) of the border were ordered to leave home.
Why We Wrote This
Despite government investment and an influx of ideologically motivated newcomers, Kiryat Shmona, Israel’s “capital of the north,” is struggling to recover financially and demographically. Its mayor warns that the city on Lebanon’s border is on the verge of collapse.
Most thought they would be gone for a few days, a few weeks at most. But today, almost 40% of Kiryat Shmona’s 24,000 residents have yet to return to their homes. And of those who have returned, many are older and more economically disadvantaged.
Ilana Binyamin sits on a main shopping street in Kiryat Shmona, July 29, 2026. She returned home in December 2025 after spending 18 months as an evacuee from the border city with Lebanon. She says she is thrilled to be living in her home city again.
For Mrs. Binyamin, the desire to come back here never went away. During the 18 months that she and her husband lived in a Tel Aviv hotel, she found a ritual that sustained her.
Every two weeks, despite the rattling booms of Hezbollah rocket barrages overhead and fears that the Iranian-backed militia might cross the border and take Israeli citizens hostage, Mrs. Binyamin boarded the No. 845 bus for the three-and-a-half-hour journey to Kiryat Shmona.
Often the sole passenger remaining by the time the bus reached the empty streets here, she would hurry to her apartment. It was too dangerous to linger.
“I would water the flowers in the garden, dust the furniture, sit in the living room. Then I’d turn around and get back on the bus,” says Mrs. Binyamin, who moved back to Kiryat Shmona in April 2025. That was after Israel reached a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon and deemed it safe enough for residents to return.
When the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran in February of this year, Mrs. Binyamin and her neighbors were once again under fire from Hezbollah. For six weeks, they spent most of their time in bomb shelters.
Things are far from back to normal. A once-bustling tech start-up center stands mostly empty. Nearby restaurants and cafés along a main shopping street have customers again, but about half the street’s businesses remain shuttered.
Despite government investment and some newcomers who have relocated here for ideological reasons to help strengthen this working-class city, Kiryat Shmona is struggling to recover financially and demographically. And there are warnings, including from its mayor, that the place is on the verge of collapse.
Israeli soldiers help a woman as she gets on a bus to evacuate from the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel, Oct. 20, 2023. The Israeli military announced it would evacuate the border city just one day after three residents were injured by cross-border fire from militants in Lebanon.
“It doesn’t matter how things end on the Lebanese front or the Iranian front if we’ve lost a city in the State of Israel,” Mayor Avichai Stern shouted at government officials during a hearing in March, about a month into the Iran war.
Those comments went viral in Israel and helped bring the city’s distress home to the rest of the country. Because they are so close to Lebanon, residents only have seconds to seek shelter when they hear air-raid sirens go off.
Pounding his fists on the table, the mayor accused the government of not providing residents with enough bomb shelters almost three years into a multifront war.
“You don’t send a soldier to battle without a bulletproof vest, right? Why are you putting civilians on the front line without protection?” he said.
For their part, government officials have blamed Mayor Stern for delays with assistance.
Israel has earmarked some $6 billion in support for border communities, with funding for improved transportation to new employment opportunities. Residents of towns and villages near Kiryat Shmona depend on government support for banking, healthcare, and access to government services.
“All the many resources put into the city’s evacuation need to be put into facilitating the return to it,” says Yotam Degani, chief development officer of the city’s community centers. He compares the city to a broken glass that now must be put together again.
“It needs to be a national project, not just a local one,” he says. “The response needs to be immediate, not in a few years,” he adds, in order to retain residents who returned and encourage others to follow.
Built in the 1950s just after Israel’s founding to absorb newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Morocco, this frontier city has been through waves of unrest, weathering cross-border attacks first by Palestinian militants and later by Hezbollah.
The trauma of such an extended displacement and the toll of ongoing uncertainty is seen in a sadness that settles over residents’ faces.
Michael Uriel Avraham walks in the mostly empty streets of Kiryat Shmona, July 29, 2026. He is among those who have returned following a mass evacuation of the city, but plans to eventually move back to the center of the country in search of better security and job prospects.
Among them is Michael Uriel Avraham, a young tech worker named after his Moroccan immigrant great-grandfather who helped build Kiryat Shmona’s city hall. Even though he always had planned to stay, Mr. Avraham says he plans to move to central Israel, where he was evacuated, where he felt safer, and where jobs are more plentiful.
“My home was bombed twice,” he says. “It’s scary to be here. And you never know when the next attack will come. Meanwhile, it does not seem like we will neutralize Hamas or Hezbollah anytime soon, or even the Iranians.”
New energy and regional cooperation
Iris Ben Shalom, director of economic development at the Upper Galilee Regional Council, which represents Kiryat Shmona’s neighboring villages and towns, says the war and displacement led local leaders to realize intensive cooperation is needed to rehabilitate the area.
“We are not arguing over resources – we are joining hands,” she says from her office, overlooking forested hills.
A centerpiece of this rebuilding effort is the planned expansion of neighboring Tel-Hai College into the new University of Kiryat Shmona. The goal is to draw thousands of students, faculty, and families to the region, anchors for long-term population growth.
Tania Kravtsov stands next to a stream in a park in Kiryat Shmona on July 29. She moved here several months ago out of idealism and a desire to help rebuild the embattled border city, the “capital” of northern Israel.
In the meantime, young people like Tania Kravtsov are among the new arrivals. A Ukrainian-born tour guide who immigrated to Israel as a child, she found herself without work because of the war and then found employment here doing community education about local rivers.
“I’m here with new eyes, new energy,” she says. “It feels important to be here, to put down roots.”
On a recent evening, a procession of people dressed in white wound their way up a steep hill to the sound of religious music. They were heading toward a local synagogue to dedicate a new Torah scroll written in honor of the matriarch of a local family.
“It’s an exciting moment after these three years of war and the period not living here. We are so happy we have reached this moment,” says Nofar Alon, granddaughter of the family. “It symbolizes hope, that we are looking forward to the future.”
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