Middle East: Haifa, once called the "Bride of the Sea" before the arrival of occupiers in Palestine, is now a city of fear, being a prime target for the resistance due to its high strategic value. Haifa is one of the most vital areas for Israel and a key target for the Axis of Resistance. It houses the largest seaport and contains oil, military, and economic facilities. Haifa is a strategic region with military installations, massive industrial and commercial facilities, including the Haifa military base responsible for the northern maritime arena, and the largest civilian port in Israel.

Haifa's strategic importance lies in its ship maintenance hangars, submarine docks, Sa'ar 4.5 ships, and the Deep Missions Unit building, among other points, making it a potential disaster for Israeli national security and a source of massive human losses if targeted.

What if Haifa were targeted by the Axis of Resistance amid the multi-front revenge efforts and Netanyahu's attempts to drag the region into a full-scale war to escape political and international criminal prosecution?

After Hezbollah's video was released, Yona Yahav,  mayor of Haifa, demanded that the Israeli government implement a comprehensive defense plan for Haifa and find a military solution to remove the northern threat. He questioned why the Chief of Staff and top Israeli Defense Forces officials had not visited Haifa to understand the city's needs and ensure maximum protection for hundreds of thousands of residents. He added that the video posed additional threats to Haifa that needed immediate attention.

Drone images of Haifa provided detailed views of ship hangars, a building in a naval base, elite units' buildings, docks, offensive missiles, a support ship, and Rafael installations, including the Iron Dome, rocket engine warehouses, boiler and radar slingshots, and civilian sites such as residential neighborhoods and shopping centers.

The Haifa Municipality's growing fear of the potential targeting of Haifa Bay was highlighted by Yedioth Ahronoth. The Bay Area and refineries are significant concerns, with municipal and Israeli front-line officials struggling to find solutions to this sensitive issue, representing a critical vulnerability in Israel.

Sarit Golan Steinberg, head of the Association of Cities for Environmental Protection in Haifa Bay, highlighted the fear that grips Israeli cities, including Haifa, due to the war's expansion. She expressed concerns about the readiness of the Home Front Command to handle rocket attacks and potential damage to petrochemical plants, stating, "Despite repeated requests, the state has not conducted a risk survey for Haifa Bay emergencies, preventing optimal conclusions about nearby population centers."

Significant Risks to the City

Yedioth Ahronoth paints a grim picture of Haifa and its bay in the event of a war with Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance from Yemen to Iraq, with Iran joining in an unprecedented strike. The Israeli newspaper predicts that such a confrontation would initially result in hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, and prolonged power outages.

Communication problems and fuel shortages are expected, with 60-70% of workers, including truck drivers for essential supplies and food, construction workers for building repairs, and faculty and medical staff, not showing up for work.

The report predicts damage to hazardous material stocks and fires in petrochemical facilities, such as gas tanks, with defense systems focusing on military installations but failing to prevent all missile damage.

Reports indicate that if a missile or drone hits a barrel and releases its contents, at least a quarter of a million people in the area, known as Haifa and Krayot, would be at risk.

In this regard, Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav urged all authorities to take urgent steps to protect Haifa, emphasizing that the factories in Haifa could cause severe damage in case of war, according to Independent Arabia.

In a meeting between Haifa city mayors and district mayors, preparations for dangers facing the city and its surroundings were discussed. The main concern was the hazardous materials in the massive factories in Haifa Bay, with the most prominent demand being the evacuation of all dangerous materials, including oil refineries.

Many officials approached the relevant ministries requesting the relocation of the refineries, but no results were achieved. Experts and officials say Israel will not be able to evacuate the hazardous factories, and even if it started today, the evacuation would take months.

Powder Kegs

The Port of Haifa is considered a highly strategic and dangerous site due to the containers awaiting shipment and tanks containing large amounts of hazardous materials. There are also many military bases and weapons depots between Haifa Bay and its port, all of which are powder kegs. Therefore, even the slightest spark could cause a disaster.

The most critical installations that Israel fears the Axis of Resistance might target include:

Haifa Ports in the Face of the Storm:

The Israeli entity harbors significant fears about the consequences of the Haifa ports being rendered inoperative if a major attack is launched by the Axis of Resistance. Decision-making circles in "Tel Aviv" are concerned about the risks of facing a severe shortage of food supplies if the Haifa port and the adjacent Israel Ships port are targeted, as they are the largest ports.

The Marker, an economic newspaper, reported that the occupation relies entirely on three ports—Haifa, Israel Ships, and Ashdod—for importing raw materials used in food production. It is likely that the Haifa ports will be among the targets hit by the Axis of Resistance, forcing the occupying state to rely solely on the state-owned Ashdod port for importing food and essential materials used in manufacturing these products.

At the beginning of the week, the Israeli Ministry of Transport issued a statement confirming that Ashdod port and the nearby privately-owned South Port, owned by the Swiss company TIL, had prepared to serve as alternatives to the Haifa and Israel Ships ports. This situation is further complicated by the significant decline in the efficiency of Ashdod port, to the extent that food importers and shipping agents transporting raw materials for food industries are careful to avoid it, opting instead for Haifa and Israel Ships ports due to the deterioration in service levels there.

The main problem facing ships heading to Ashdod port if it is targeted is that the mechanisms and capabilities used for unloading ship cargo are not advanced, reducing the possibility of relying on it for importing essential materials used in food industries, such as wheat for bread production and animal feed for cattle and chickens, the primary source of meat, as well as soy used in many food industries.

According to the newspaper's data, 75% of food products were imported last year through the Haifa and Israel Ships ports, while only 25% were imported via Ashdod port. This means Israel could face a 75% shortfall in securing food imports.

Haifa Petrochemical Complex

This is one of Israel's most important and sensitive economic centers, containing many facilities that process and store petrochemical materials, in addition to the commercial port on the Mediterranean coast.

The complex consists of several vital facilities:

The Northern Line: Located north of the Kishon area on land specifically prepared for this purpose, due to its distance from populated areas and proximity to petrochemical industrial centers.

This part of the complex includes an underground pipeline system for transporting methanol and other petrochemical materials, storage tanks for ammonia and ethylene, as well as various supporting service facilities for providing nitrogen, drinking water, compressed air, fire-fighting systems, and a weight bridge.

The Southern Line: Located at the end of the general shipping dock in the Kishon area, comprising seventy tanks connected by pipelines to a platform servicing a single ship.

The Port

The eastern part is designated for handling petroleum-derived materials, covering an area sufficient to dock two ships simultaneously with a discharge capacity of up to one thousand tons per hour.

The outer anchorage is a floating facility in Haifa Bay north of the port, with a discharge capacity of 2,500 tons per hour, where crude oil shipments are offloaded from large tankers before being transported via underwater pipelines to storage tanks and then transferred to Haifa Refinery.

The Tanks

Located in Kiryat Haim, comprising 41 tanks with a total capacity of 937,000 cubic meters of crude oil, in addition to 17 tanks with a capacity of 157,000 cubic meters located in the main port, dedicated to storing heavy and light crude oil, diesel, kerosene, and gasoline.

The Refineries:

Providing all the temporary entity's needs for petroleum products, including industrial and household gas, paraffin, kerosene, marine diesel fuel, and crude oil, both heavy and light. They have a refining capacity of up to 13 million tons of crude oil annually and are connected by pipelines to the Ashdod Refinery, one of the largest oil refineries in the world, located south on the Mediterranean coast.

Haifa Refinery Complex

This is one of the most critical economic centers in the entity, being highly sensitive due to the numerous facilities that process and store petrochemical materials, as well as the commercial port on the Mediterranean coast. The complex has a refining capacity of about 25,000 tons of oil per day.

Rafael Military Industries Complex

The Rafael Military Industries Complex is a military-industrial area belonging to Rafael, containing numerous factories, warehouses, and testing fields, where components of active air defense systems are manufactured and assembled, particularly the Iron Dome and David's Sling.

This is the area Hezbollah confirmed to be extremely sensitive and secretive, covering a total area of 6.5 square kilometers and located 24 kilometers from the Lebanese border.

The footage showed Iron Dome platforms, a missile engine testing tunnel, missile engine storage, the David's Sling platform, control and guidance systems factories, a radar for missile testing, the company's administrative buildings, and other detailed strategic points.

The Kiryat

The aerial survey also captured what is called "The Kiryat," which Hezbollah describes as a densely populated urban cluster adjacent to the Haifa Bay coast, north of the occupied city, with about 260,000 settlers. It includes six major cities and neighborhoods: Kiryat Yam, Kiryat Motzkin, Kiryat Ata, Kiryat Bialik, Kiryat Haim, and Kiryat Shmuel, covering an area of about 20 square kilometers and located 28 kilometers from the Lebanese border.

Haifa Station (32.81175°, 35.021778°)

This is the first steam power station for electricity generation in occupied Palestine, built in 1925, producing up to 828 megawatts of electricity.

Translated by Almasirah English website
 

#Yemen #Israel #Hezbollah #Resistance 24-08-09