Behind the Headlines the Reviving of Kiryat Shemona

Two weeks after the shelling by Palestinian terrorists, shattered windows, damaged buildings, twisted girders and burnt-out tree stumps still mar the landscape of the northern town of Kiryat Shemona. But Leon Dulzin, the chairman of the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization Executives, is confident that the Jewish Agency can renew the vigor of this failing township with a $5 million grant to the Galilee region.

“Kiryat Shemona no longer only represents the border of the State of Israel. Kiryat Shemona has become the heart of Eretz Yisrael and of the entire Jewish world,” Dulzin told the acting town council last week during a visit there with members of the WZO Executive.

Although a plan to renew the Galilee with Jewish Agency funds has been in the making for six months, it was the recent Katyusha attacks from Lebanon which prompted the WZO Executive to hold its monthly meeting in Kiryat Shemona and there make public its plan.

“We need to make the Galilee into one large and productive enterprise,” Jewish Agency treasurer Akiva Levinsky told the town council. “We have all lately begun to understand just how important is the development of this region.” In that light, the Jewish Agency has pledged to funnel at least $5 million from Agency funds and United Jewish Appeal contributions by the end of the budget year 1983, with $3 million available by March 1982.

But Levinsky is confident that the $5 million target is, at best, a cautious estimate. “We already have within our treasury nearly $4 million for the project, so we could collect twice the sum we expect by March of 1983 just within this framework,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Furthermore, together with other ongoing Jewish Agency projects directed at the region as well as government efforts in the Galilee, we may see as much as $30 million being funnelled into the region by 1983. This is only the beginning,” he said.

A TIMELY DECISION

The decision to assist the Galilee townships is a timely one. Beset by two weeks of intermittent shelling from the Lebanese border, thousands of Israelis spent days in sweltering, badly maintained bomb shelters. Even Premier Menachem Begin, on a visit to the region, conceded that the summer heat made it difficult to breathe in the underground structures.

But the problem goes beyond the physical confines of the bomb shelters. Galilee residents have long maintained that lack of funds has prevented them from developing a sufficient socio-cultural life for the region to compensate for the distance which separated it from the country’s cultural centers. The border skirmishes — and consequent tension for the northern residents — serve to emphasize the region’s failings in other areas, and the residents themselves are quick to point this out.

The behavior of the residents of Kiryat Shemona, the hardest hit during the recent shelling, is a case in point. Eighty percent of the town’s 15,000 residents abandoned the region at the height of the attacks, among them the town treasurer and security coordinator. Some 3,000 persons, many of them unqualified, were left to operate the town during the emergency. The statistic has left many residents both stunned and resentful. “I don’t know where we’re going anymore,” conceded one 40-year-old woman employee in the municipality. “Sure, after 25 years in the town, today I can’t walk 100 meters without saying God be with me. But how can I look in the eyes of all those who left?” Am I so different from them that I want to keep on trying?”

Shlomo Brom, 31, is more outspoken. Brom moved to Kiryat Shemona seven years ago with his wife and children. Today, he still plans to remain but is confused about the objectives of his presence in the town. “I am here, because being here constitutes a gesture of contemporary Zionism,” he told JTA. “But I need others to be here with me and I need the country to be behind me.”

Brom suspects that the defense establishment created a situation which would force people to leave the town, because it knew how much it would suffer from the Palestinian terrorist attacks. “Maybe I’m exaggerating,” he admits, “but I don’t feel we have backing anywhere. We need support — not only in wartime for our immediate needs but in maintaining a superior way of life in peace as well.”

THE FOCUS OF THE PROJECT

It is to these needs that the Jewish Agency project addresses itself. Focusing on over 25 different townships, the Agency funds will particularly stress the development of educational and cultural enterprises for the residents of the Galilee, which will strengthen the regional infrastructure. They include a new teacher’s college, library, technological centers, day care centers and homes for the aged.

In Kiryat Shemona, the town council will turn an old Arab house into a regional fine arts center, with a school for painting and sculpture. In Metulla, a new sports center will be constructed; in Maalot, a new center for Jewish studies.

While Kiryat Shemona is only a part of the new plan to revive the Galilee, Agency officials are paying special attention to the particular strife against its residents in recent weeks. In that light, they have decided to grant the town council an additional $250,000 for further development of the town. In addition, the entire town has been declared part of Project Renewal. By making the town part of this scheme, its members will be able to apply for development funds for building renewal.

But if the plans are to take hold, both the Jewish Agency and the residents are convinced they must be long-term and take into consideration all potential developments on the border with Lebanon. For the population still remains frightened that if the cease-fire deteriorates into a war of attrition, they are no longer sure who will remain and for how long.

“The recent shelling was short but it was long enough to show us that there are problems which, if not taken care of, will cost us in the long-run,” the Mayor of Nahariya told the WZO Executive members during a recent meeting of the Galilee regional council. “We must be first priority. There must be a turning point or we will miss the mark.”

The Agency is convinced that the way to combat such a phenomenon is through aliya, and it plans to conduct extensive efforts to bring Galilee to the Jewish public abroad. Informative pamphlets on Galilee settlements will be distributed and a locally-made film on the Galilee will be translated and shown on American Cable TV.

Dulzin, for one, is confident that the Jewish Agency will find the funds to make such ambitious programming operative. “The Jews of the U.S. received the plan to revive the Galilee beyond all expectations, and they are looking forward to putting the region at the top of their priorities.”