War memories rankle Israelis along battered border

KIRYAT SHMONA, Israel, July 10 (Reuters) Orly Peretz has angrier words for her own Israeli government than for the Hezbollah guerrillas over in Lebanon who pounded her town with rockets last year, wrecking or damaging hundreds of homes.

''I felt they treated me like a refugee in the Gaza Strip,'' said Peretz, 41, a mother of three in the Kiryat Shmona border town, comparing her circumstances during the month-long war with the lot of Palestinians in their war-torn coastal territory.

Much of Peretz's small three-room apartment suffered blast damage during the fighting, when Hezbollah fired some 4,000 rockets into Israel, more than a quarter of which ploughed into her working class town of 25,000.

Though her home has since been repaired at government expense, the part-time clerk feels patronised by Israeli authorities she says did little during the fighting to relieve the suffering of civilians living near the front lines.

She worries that war could well return and empathises with Lebanese civilians who were killed or whose homes were destroyed in the war.

''When we shell them, those poor people suffer too,'' she told Reuters last week.

The 34-day war erupted last July 12 after the guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid, then rocketed the Jewish state as Israel bombarded their strongholds in Lebanon, killing more than 1,200 Lebanese.

In Israel, 157 people were killed, mostly soldiers and 43 of them civilians before a UN-sponsored truce.

Kiryat Shmona was the most battered of Israel's northern region bordering on Lebanon, where up to a million Israelis took refuge in concrete-reinforced shelters or fled the area.

Though the town sustained few civilian casualties -- none were killed by rockets, while 50 people suffered injuries -- the war's physical and emotional impact was great.

More than 1,000 of the Katyusha rockets fired from Lebanon struck Kiryat Shmona, destroying or damaging more than 2,000 homes and businesses there alone. Fires ignited by rockets and Israeli artillery shells scorched 75,000 trees around the town.

Most Israeli homes and businesses damaged in the war have since been repaired, but building facades pockmarked by shrapnel still dot the landscape as a ready reminder of what has past.

Also slowing the war recovery is the fact that Kiryat Shmona, which translates as ''Town of the Eight'' after eight Jewish heroes killed fighting Arabs there in 1920, is one of Israel's poorest, bypassed by an otherwise booming economy.

RAMPANT UNEMPLOYMENT Unemployment is rampant among the town's population mainly of immigrants from former Soviet states and North Africa, many of whom feel cut off from and forgotten by Israel's mainstream.

Peretz resents how her town has been sidelined.

''Once it's quiet here, no one pays much attention to us or cares about our economic situation. If I had the money I would leave,'' she says.

She also worries the fighting isn't really over. ''I feel almost sure the war will return. It's on my mind all the time.'' Such concerns were fueled by an official inquiry released in April that scathingly criticised Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's handling of the war.

In addition to assailing the military's war readiness, the Winograd Commission said the government had provided inadequate protection for Israeli civilians in the line of fire, citing a lack of bomb shelters and other measures.

Kiryat Shmona city officials say fewer than 100 of about 550 public shelters had been refurbished since last year's war.

''There's a terrible feeling of anger among the residents of Kiryat Shmona,'' says Peretz referring to the shelters.

She recalls how vulnerable she felt during the war when she avoided using her own building's mouldy, flea-infested shelter.

''It started with 30 or 40 rockets a day then rose to 100.

People here suffered endlessly,'' she says.

Peretz sent her three children to relatives in another town after her youngest boy, Naor, now 13, was hurled across the building's lobby when a rocket struck a neighbour's home.

She regrets that Israel's attacks also caused victims among the Lebanese, killing them and ruining their homes. ''Their children suffer just like mine do, why should they?'' she said.

Having grown up in a town prone to rocket attacks from Lebanon since the 1970s -- none so intense as the 2006 war -- Peretz doubts she will ever see peace along the Lebanese border.

She has put plans to celebrate her son's bar mitzvah, a Jewish coming of age ceremony, on hold for now, pending a quiet summer for fear of it being disrupted by a rocket attack.

''In another two or three months, if I see it is calm,'' Peretz said. ''Maybe then I'll plan a party.'' Reuters SY GC0846