Returning to the water holes, the market and the square: The new residents of Kiryat Shmona are breathing life into the city's symbol

After more than a decade of standing desolate, a group of new families who moved to live in Kiryat Shmona in recent months inaugurated a cafe and cultural center on Thursday at Hermon Square, with the goal of bringing bustling commercial life back to it. When the host of the opening event asked the new residents in the city to raise their hands - hundreds of hands were raised in the air.

Jacqueline Elharar (83), a mother of 18 who immigrated to Kiryat Shmona from Morocco in the late 50s, was invited to the stage as a representative of the veterans and received a bouquet of flowers from one of the families who moved to live in the city just last week. "It was very moving to meet them," she said. "They give light. A feeling that good news is also arriving here. It is not taken for granted."

The one leading the initiative to establish the local cafe and cultural center is Dani Kutan, a social entrepreneur and one of the founders of the "Kiryat Shmona Core", who himself moved from Tel Aviv to the city and is working to absorb the new families. "We want to create a place here that feels different. A place for beer, for performances - not a place for a one-time event but a place that will bring the movement of people back here and bring other entrepreneurs and business owners a bustling space to open a business in," he says.

In the nearby IDF Square, the "Culture Movement" operates, establishing a creative and activity space for artists at the beginning of their path. Kutan, married and a father of two, explains the decision to open a cafe specifically in the abandoned square: "We moved to live last summer and saw that everyone who wants to bash the city comes and takes pictures of Hermon Square and says 'How is this city dead, everything here is closed'. This is not only the heart of Kiryat Shmona, but a symbol of the heart of the Galilee."

Kutan marks the students from the college of Kiryat Shmona as a strategic target. "We sought to establish a designed cafe here that broadcasts 'top premium' with an excellent coffee machine, comfortable and beautiful furniture and innovative design." He explains that "Kiryat Shmona is a university city. But while the city center in Beersheba for example, which has a university, is the center of affairs to which students arrive and where they consume services and social and community life, then here the reality is the opposite and they find all this precisely in the small kibbutzim in the surroundings. We want to create these places here, this will be a great university city."

To revive the abandoned center, Bank Hapoalim joined the new initiatives - through the "Poalim for Revival" fund - and transferred a donation of over half a million shekels. Alongside the cafe and the shared workspace, 12 cultural events will be produced throughout the year under the title 'Thursday Alive in the Square' which will include live performances and a night market with stalls of local businesses from the city.

The Mayor of Kiryat Shmona, Avichai Stern, welcomed the new residents: "You chose to come here at a time when the choice of Kiryat Shmona is not something taken for granted. You chose not only a new address, you chose a community."

On the eve of the evacuation, Kiryat Shmona was in growth and at an unprecedented turning point. Nearly 26 thousand of its residents were evacuated in October 2023 with the outbreak of the war and less than ten thousand residents have returned to it so far. About 40 percent of the businesses in it also did not reopen, and those that did open are now dealing with lower incomes. Facing this reality, a group of dozens of new families, numbering over 300 residents, chose to move to the city and take part in its revival together with the local residents. They do not ask to rehabilitate or save the town but to be part of its rebuilding.