Dovi Sonny’s house is a long-standing source of irritation and major concern today that Hezbollah revealed that the service in northeastern Israel was in its sights.
Sonny, 66, is a 66-year-old man who is unsure what would happen if a rocket struck one of the towering circular containers in Haifa, which is located about 100 meters (yards ) away from his residence.
He, like everyone else in the port city, only 30 miles ( less than 20 miles ) from the Lebanese border, has been left in the dark about the threats from the professional area– and therefore fears the worst.
Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed party that has been firing rockets at Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, has drone footage of both his apartment block and the tank.
” When we hear the ( rocket ) sirens… it’s scary”, says Sonny, a guitar repairman with silver skull bracelets, tapping his chest with his fist to evoke a pounding heartbeat.
” During the Gulf War, one weapon fell not far from here. And all the homes… It’s really scary”, says Sonny, who also plays guitar in a stone group.
His hometown of Kiryat Haim is a part of the Haifa town, but it is separated from the town by a vast business area, which includes an oil refinery, a professional interface, and an petrol storage facility.
One of the numerous enormous tanks that hangs close to his wall behind a chain-link gate is in the middle of it.
– ‘ Occupants do n’t understand’-
Official protestations that the site was made safe by the filling of some tanks do not help Hila Laufer, a native of Kiryat Haim and previous Haifa city council with the Green Party.
She tells AFP, pointing to the row of tanks that are most near apartment blocks, that” the residents do n’t know how many are really full and how many are empty.”
They do n’t even have the desire to look into this issue because they do n’t think the oil will ever be moved from here, she said.
She recalls Haifa’s prior, unsuccessful grassroots efforts to move commercial and residential places away from home regions.
” For decades, we have been yelling incessantly about the current state in which we live. What will happen if the day arrives and we are attacked from all sides, including Iran and Iran?
Without providing any specifics, the Israeli army claimed to have ordered changes to all of the north’s professional areas.
When asked about the Haifa commercial area, it was decided to” as a precaution, it was decided to check, examine, and limit the transportation of materials in many businesses in the north,” it said, adding that” the order does not refer to a complete cessation of action.”
It said the Home Front Command, which is responsible for civil protection, “maintains constant contact” with all the facilities, including “daily examinations” to keep” a complete picture… of the inventory of hazardous materials”.
Tashan, the state-owned company responsible for the oil storage site, did not respond to AFP requests for comment.
The private Basan Group, which is in charge of the adjacent oil refinery, closer to downtown Haifa, told AFP it was applying army directives.
– ‘ A big bomb’-
Before the war, there had already been a knowledge gap regarding the nature and volumes of the substances handled in Haifa’s industrial zone.
Independent media Mekomit denounced a culture of “repression” and” concealment” that it said could bring about an incident like the Beirut port explosion of 2020.
More than 220 people were killed and a large area of the city were ruined by an enormous explosion of ammonium nitrate fertilizer that had been stored haphazardly for years in the Lebanese capital’s port.
A Haifa city councillor named Raja Zaatry recalls the conflict between private and public companies that helped relocate ammonia stocks to the Negev desert.
He claims that the Haifa municipality compelled these factories to reduce the volumes, particularly in the neighborhoods that are close to the neighbourhoods.
Even then, Zaatry, like Sonny and Laufer, admits he does not know exactly what happens in the industrial area.
” I do n’t know exactly what are the materials, but we know it’s dangerous materials and it’s making also pollution. And in case of war, it can become a big bomb”, he says.
Fears of an environmental disaster are also sparked by the fact that Haifa’s industrial area is located next to one of the largest ports in the eastern Mediterranean, Laufer said.
In the meanwhile, despite the smell and the fear of explosion, Sonny says he will stay put because “it’s our home”.
One of his biggest regrets is that his music concerts were canceled as a result of the war.
” There is no music, there is no rock and roll”, he says.
