Kiryat Shmona

A development town on the northern tip of the Hula Valley, Kiryat Shmona is one of the last frontiers. Faced regularly with fallout from tense relations with Lebanon to the north, more than one third of the population of this city is under the age of nineteen. Established in 1949 at the site of a former Bedouin village, Al-Khalisa, Kiryat Shmona is named after eight (“shmona” in Hebrew) men who fell defending nearby Tel Chai in 1920, including Josef Trumpeldor. The heritage of being associated with and prone to attacks stuck with Kiryat Shmona, which suffered a massacre in 1974 when 18 residents were killed by the PFLP. In 1981 and 1986 the PLO were perpetrators of attacks on the town and the Hezbollah continued the tradition with katyusha rockets in 1996. Nearly half of Kiryat Shmona’s residents were systematically evacuated during the 2nd Lebanese War in 2006.

On the lighter, brighter and happier side, as a northern destination for tourists visiting nearby Tel Dan and other nature reserves in the Galilee, the longest cable car in Israel connects Kiryat Shmona with a spectacular observation point in Kibbutz Manara, looking out on the entire Hula Valley. It is also home to a high caliber soccer team, giving residents some respite from their woes. The municipal Golden Park straddles both sides of “Ein Zahav” (Golden Stream) where an Ottoman Period flour mill stands beside the stream as well as a small mosque, remnant of the Arab village that preceded the town.