For Those Who Remain, A Cycle of Siren and Shelter

HAIFA, Israel, July 27 -- At the port of Haifa, the parking lots are empty and the docks are vacant. Long chains with hooks at their ends dangle from tall, silent cranes, swaying gently in the Mediterranean breeze. The only sign of life is a white security vehicle making lonely laps.

Nearby, crane operator Nissim Benbenishty, 62, has stopped at the Dagon grain facility to boost the spirits of a co-worker. Of Dagon's 85 employees, only three, all security personnel, are working. The rest have left town or are staying close to home, where they can be with their families and dash into a bomb shelter at the first whisper of an air raid siren.

Over Benbenishty's shoulder looms the famous Dagon Silo, a 223-foot-high grain elevator with a capacity of 100,000 tons.

"Even during normal times, the slightest spark will send the building sky high," he explains. Haifa residents have worried since the current conflict began that a missile strike on the silo could devastate the surrounding area.

In the past two weeks, the radical Shiite militia Hezbollah has fired more than 60 rockets from southern Lebanon at Haifa, Israel's third-largest city and largest port, killing nine people and seriously injuring 13, according to Mickey Rosenfeld, a spokesman for Israel's national police. Since then, about half of Haifa's 270,000 residents have fled south, hoping to get out of range, Rosenfeld said.

"I don't feel good. I don't feel good," Benbenishty says. "We are surrounded by Arab countries that want to annihilate us."

When the sirens scream, he says, people dash to the shelters, and afterward his wife, six children and four grandchildren grab their cellphones to make sure everyone is accounted for. "Our phone bills are going to be huge next month," he says.

Next to the Dagon Silo, the Haifa train station is closed. There is little traffic on the main road connecting Haifa to Tel Aviv, 50 miles south, and most storefronts are shuttered tight.

Amir Ardet, 23, an Israeli Arab minding his family's bakery, waves his hand over platters of sweets and breads. "Everything is delicious, but we have no customers," he says.

"The whole area is office buildings and government workers, and they are either sitting at home or have run off to Tel Aviv, and all the port workers took vacation," he says.

That has left Haifa with a core of people who seem resigned to their fate.

"What can you do?" Ardet says, echoing a familiar refrain. "If I die, I die."