Visiting archaeological sites, ancient fortresses and healing hot springs, enjoying hiking and adventure sports, such as riverboat rafting in beautiful rustic settings, are popular activities in the cool, hilly mountains and forests of northern Israel in the summer.

This year, Hizbullah’s unprovoked attack on Israel has wreaked havoc on domestic tourism, reversing the seasonal flow to the North. Thousands of Israelis have cancelled their holiday reservations in cabins and chalets and tens of thousands have gone south, seeking safer havens in the middle and southern part of the country.

How are we Israelis dealing with this surprise war? We feel grim when we think of the mother killed sitting on her balcony in Nahariya while drinking a cup of coffee, the grandmother and her grandson killed in the Meron mountains on a Friday afternoon, two children killed playing in the streets of Nazareth, a father killed when leaving his bomb shelter to get a blanket for his baby, and soldiers (our sons) killed in battle. Tomorrow, I will pay a shiva call to the family of Rafael Mushkal, 21, from nearby Maskeret Batya

Sunday was a bad day – 93 missiles hit, leaving 91 wounded and two dead.

And yet the attacks are like a magic pill that brings out the best qualities in us. Initially incredulous, we are now banding together to help each other.

My own relatively safe town of Rehovot has been a place of asylum for people fleeing the ongoing rocket and missile attacks and spine-chilling sirens less than two and three hours away. Local internet sites offer home hospitality, and as a gesture to the visitors, the community center is offering free activities to people from the North, the Weizmann Institute is giving free entry to the Science Park, the local pools are giving free entry, and amusement parks are giving discounts of 50% and more. Packages of toiletries and food are also being collected at central locations and sent to soldiers.

In Efrat, where my daughter lives, the dormitory of the Neve Shmuel high school has been given over to 300 people who fled their homes, many of whom left without sheets and blankets because they did not expect to be away for more than a few days. Gush Etzion is hosting over 1,000 people from the North, most in private homes.

“The refugees are both religious and secular, from high and low income families, and from a variety of ethnic backgrounds,” said Chana Metzger, assistant to the mayor of Efrat, who is working a 24/7 shift. “Bound together by the war, they are living in the harmony of shared experience.” Volunteer teenagers are helping to serve meals, run activities for the children and take clothes in need of laundering to private homes.”

“I think that people here are more nervous than they are in Nahariya,” said Shlomit Berenson, who arrived in Efrat with her husband Nahum just a few days ago. Shlomit, who is pregnant, said that the main reason she didn’t leave Nahariya right away, even though her home was close enough to literally hear the Katyushas being fired, was because her husband was still teaching in the local Yeshiva (albeit in a bomb shelter). She managed to keep her five children busy with indoor activities during the first 12 days, and then the reality of their situation hit her when Vardette, 8, “made a very good drawing of a missile hitting a building.” The gutsy Nahariya mom decided it was time to move in with her in-laws, which has, she conceded, eased the children’s fears considerably.

On Sunday, the mayor of Haifa called for a return to routine – for the opening of banks, libraries and businesses. But with rockets packed with metal ball bearings continuing to rain down on the North and Haifa, killing civilians unable to reach shelter in time (20 seconds to a minute from the time the siren sounds), a return to normalcy is a dream.

“I’ve lost count of the number of sirens today,” said L., a Haifa resident and mother of five, on a day when Hizbullah aimed a barrage of at least 132 rockets and missiles at Israel’s northern cities and towns. “Sometimes we hear the explosions even before the sirens go off,” she added.

Despite this particularly stressful day, some 40,000 Haifa residents returned to their homes at the weekend to hopefully start the week off “normally.” But on Sunday, Haifa was again a target when an apartment building was hit and two people killed.

“We have basically not been able to go out of the house for a week,” said L., “except to buy food, which we do only when instructed.” She and her husband decided not to leave Haifa, although both are not able to go to work. “My husband works in high tech and his office building is mostly made of glass. I work at the Technion and I’d have to pass a lot of windows to reach the bomb shelter. On Sunday, my husband will pick up a portable computer from his office so that he can work at home.”

In peaceful times, the family enjoys the view towards Haifa Bay. They moved to Haifa a few years after coming on aliyah from New York in the 1980s. Their apartment, which is in a 40+ year old building, has neither a bomb shelter nor a protected room, as building codes at that time did not require proper shelters with metal doors and windows, toilets and running water.

“We use a room with only one window as our “protected room,” said L. “We took the glass out so that we would not have to worry about it shattering. We all sleep in one room to avoid getting up at night when the sirens go off.”

An elderly neighbor, who is a Holocaust survivor and has taken the war zone situation with equanimity, comes over periodically to check on the children. The children -aged 10, 12, 13, 17, plus an 18 year old who is doing National Service – keep themselves busy reading, playing games and chatting with their friends on the phone.

“We don’t know what has been hit until we get on the internet or listen to the radio or TV,” said L. “Sometimes the windows rattle so we know the explosion was nearby. We are trying to keep our spirits up.”

Danny Nir and his wife Moira of Moshav Moreshet in the western Galilee were taking their turn as parent leaders of a rotating summer day camp, until a rocket landed in nearby Carmiel. “Outdoor excursions became prohibited so I decided to hold a robotics club at home instead. Soon after, all camps were cancelled.”

The ban on all summer camps as a safety measure makes sense. “The crux of the problem, however, is that if you don’t have any activity for the children, the parents can’t go to work,” said Nir, who works in the innovative R &D labs of AMDOCS in Ra’anana. Moira, an MIT PhD. in chemical engineering, does materials research and consulting for a nanotechnology company in Caesarea.

“I had to be in Jerusalem for my work the next day, so I decided to take the children [aged 7,10,12 and 15] to cousins in Rehovot for the day. A week later, we are all still camped out in Rehovot.”

Grandma Audrey, formerly of Silver Springs, Maryland and now a resident of Rehovot, cancelled a trip to the States to help out. “I try to get the kids out to the park in the morning and in the late afternoon,” said the non-driver, who seems to have found renewed energy to deal with the expanded household.

“Through our moshav website we found a week-long sleep-away camp run by the JNF in Jerusalem for our oldest son,” said Moira. This week, AMDOCS is running a day camp for the two younger boys. The TV, she points out, provides listings and telephone numbers of people and organizations offering accommodations and services in various cities. “We were in Beit Shemesh on Shabbat and a friend said that she had the keys to three houses, if we needed a place to stay!”

Moira is trying to keep the children in touch with friends. “The cell phone is a big help,” she comments. “We all feel displaced but it’s our task as parents to keep spirits up. We live from day to day and can only hope,” she says wistfully, “that tomorrow will bring better things.”