Sirens stop for no one in Israel - dead or alive

HAIFA - The anxiety etched on her face, the gold crucifix unmissable around her neck, Janet Balan explained that she had not ventured out since the war started nearly four weeks ago until she felt compelled to for the funeral of her friends and neighbours, Hana Hamam, 62, and Labiba Mazawi, 67.

It was little more than 300m from the St Elias's Church in the poor, Christian/Muslim Arab neighbourhood of Wadi Nisnas to the little garden in front of Hamam's house, in which he and Mazawi were killed by shrapnel from the 220mm Hizbollah rocket that demolished the house next door on Sunday night.

But the journey I made with Balan, 52, her mother, Adiba, 83, and two other women of the neighbourhood was twice interrupted by sirens.

There are no public shelters here - a source of frequent complaints by Israeli Arab community leaders. So when the first siren sounded the women looked around, anxious for somewhere to take shelter.

We alighted on a roofless space between two walls, hoping that if Hizbollah's lightning did strike twice in the same area, the rocket would not descend vertically.

The second time the sirens sounded, about five minutes later, we took shelter in the basement of what appeared to be a gambling den, a poker table laid out in the ground-floor room.

Despite the fact that this was probably the best security the women had enjoyed since the war started, they soon registered their disapproval.

"This place smells," one said.

Karem Houri, 25, who joined us under cover, shouted "Hallas [Enough]" above the siren before declaring to the company: "As a Christian Arab citizen of Israel I am ready to join the Israeli Army to take care of Iran, Syria and even Lebanon."

The prevailing view, however, among many of the hundreds of mourners who packed into St Elias's for the Requiem Mass for Hamam and Mazawi had been less bellicose, if sometimes critical of Israel.

Adel Malshy, 53, the headmaster of the local secondary school, said Israel should not have left Lebanon in 2000 without dealing with issues like the disputed Shebaa Farms in the Golan Heights and Lebanese prisoners, which had given a pretext for Hizbollah to conduct their raid on 12 July.

But they listened as the Melkite Archbishop of Nazareth told them that the two deaths were the work of human beings and not of God, and that it was incumbent on ordinary people on both sides to work for peace.

At the end of the journey, as she surveyed the shrapnel dents in the wall of Hamam's garden, where his son and four grandchildren had run into the house when they heard the sirens, Balan said sadly of the old couple: "They didn't have time."

Then she alluded proudly to Haifa's reputation for peaceful co-existence.

"I have a lot of customers - Jewish, Christian, Muslim - and they all want peace," she said.

"If it was left to the little people like us there would be peace."

Unfortunately, whether there is peace depends on politicians and guerrilla groups and not the little people.

- INDEPENDENT