Living in the shadow of an Israeli artillery battery, whose volleys have rattled their windows day and night for nearly a week, almost all 300 residents have fled this farming village that clings to a rocky ridge on the Lebanese border.
Pinchas Aplaton and his son Gal, a soldier home on leave, were among a handful remaining behind Monday, forced by economic necessity, they said, to tend their tidy rows of tomato and eggplant crops during the summer harvest.
Aplaton's wife, Irit, his daughter and two other sons left a day earlier on a bus bound for Netanya, a city 80 miles to the south and, until now, beyond the reach of rockets that have rained on northern Israel for nearly a week.
"Once we saw this was heating up, there was no choice but for the women and children to go," Pinchas Aplaton said, puffing his cheeks and shaking his head as yet another outgoing round resounded from a nearby hill. "So, for now, we live apart."
Later that afternoon, at the sprawling boarding school in Netanya where she and her children are waiting out the crisis, Irit Aplaton said she was "worried half to death" about her husband. In a period of less than 24 hours, they had spoken at least a dozen times, with most conversations lasting about as long as it takes him to say, "I'm still okay."
The snapshot of the Aplatons' life Monday is a window on the experience of thousands of Israelis living under bombardment across the country's north. According to military sources, about 50 percent of residents in this region, which includes Haifa, the country's third-largest city, have evacuated since cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon began last week, after the group captured two Israeli soldiers in an ambush.
Hundreds of businesses are shuttered, leaving downtowns eerily empty.
That departure rate is even higher in the string of tiny border towns that for decades have weathered periodic conflict. Pinchas Aplaton was born here 50 years ago and manned an antiaircraft gun during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. For years afterward, he recalled, rocket attacks were routine. When the Israeli army withdrew after an 18-year occupation, he said, he and other villagers worried that violence would surge. It didn't.
"It was quiet for six years. Now, they take the soldiers and the rockets start flying and we're back in the middle of a war," he said.
To shelter themselves from the rocket fire, Pinchas and Gal, who returns to his post in the West Bank next week, now sleep in their basement, on the stone floor of a room that until last week they rented as part of a small bed-and-breakfast. They said they take comfort in the fact that unlike many of the tens of thousands of Lebanese forced from their homes by the violence in recent days, his wife and family are so far living comfortably, after climbing aboard a regional government bus Monday and heading south.
Broad range of housing for the displaced
The Israeli government is funding a broad range of programs for displaced Israelis, and private citizens in safer regions are advertising widely on the radio and Internet, offering shelter for those in need.
One Web site established last Friday has already received more than 650 postings from those offering to house people who want to leave the north. Volunteers seem almost to be competing to attract potential housemates, with some offering to give up their bedrooms and others boasting of pools or large back yards.
"Because of the war up north, there arose a need for northern families to leave their homes. This is a private initiative of Shlomi, a teacher in Jerusalem who had the idea to draft families to shelter people," the site explains.
As the violence began to escalate, Zvi Marun, a school administrator born in the north, invited residents of Margaliyot and several nearby villages to stay in dormitories in Netanya on the Mediterranean coast, left vacant during the summer recess. About 140 families took him up on the offer to come to Neveh Hadassah school, a leafy campus that feels more like summer camp than a refugee camp.
His staff has served the displaced Israelis three meals a day and organized activities for their children, such as an on-campus swimming pool and trips to a nearby amusement park.
"We do this because the Katyushas don't fall here and we have many families in the North that are in the shelters for six days already," Marun said in a telephone interview, referring to rockets fired by Hezbollah. Israel's Education Ministry has agreed to foot the $30,000 daily bill for at least a week, he said.
"In the beginning, the plan was to get the children out, even without parents, but they wouldn't come alone," he said. "So we decided that we had no choice and took everyone."
"They received us with open arms. I was so grateful I was speechless," said Irit Aplaton, in the white-tiled dormitory room she shares with her children. "Some people didn't like the accommodation, so they went to hotels, but we are happy here."
"Of course, I would rather be home. I can't stop thinking about my husband working out in the open all day," she said.
"This is not new for us," she was quick to point out. "We have been through it before." Most of Margaliyot was evacuated during an Israeli offensive on Lebanon in 1996. That time, residents left their homes for three weeks.
"I hope it is shorter this time," she said.
Support for assault, sympathy for Lebanese
Asked if she is concerned for her own safety, Irit said she was sure residents of southern Lebanon are in worse condition.
"They are good people and I hope they are not suffering," she said, recalling the days of the Israeli occupation, when relatives of Lebanese soldiers recruited to the Israeli cause were permitted to cross the border and work in Israeli homes. Later, she said, after Israel pulled back, Lebanese shepherds would graze their flocks up to the flimsy border fence to chat with Margaliyot residents.
"Our government is looking after us," she said. "I don't know who is looking after them."
But Irit, an assistant kindergarten teacher, and her husband said they welcomed the Israeli government's air assault on Lebanon, despite the disruption to theirs and others' lives.
"This time Hezbollah must be destroyed totally. There is no other choice," she said. "We are patient people. Even if it takes two months, when we go back home I want to know we are going back for good."
Special correspondent Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.
