By TOVAH LAZAROFF
To escape the rockets in Nahariya, Eli Suliman this week checked his family into a hotel in Netanya for 10 days, even though he has braved the fatal rain of missiles and gone daily to his job at the Carasso automotive repair shop outside Haifa.
"I still need the money," he told The Jerusalem Post as he stood in the large modern workroom in-between warning sirens on Tuesday.
The Suliman family left their home in the coastal city almost two weeks ago on the day the first rockets fell and shattered all their windows.
Since then, his wife and two teenage sons have visited Tel Aviv and Eilat before settling in a hotel in the coastal city of Netanya, which is closer to the center of the country and has not been targeted by rockets.
In the Carasso garage, the employees have a sense of humor when it comes to the more than 1,200 rockets Hizbullah has launched from the Lebanese border. They are an island of activity in the strip of largely closed shops that lines the highway from Acre into Haifa.
To make sure that customers know they are open for business, the employees hung a large green handwritten sign on the side of the highway that stated in rhyming Hebrew: "Missiles are falling, but we are still working."
On Tuesday morning their work was interrupted a number of times by sirens that sent the employees running into the basement locker room, where it is safe. They sat on low benches until they were sure they were out of danger.
Manager Shmulik Taliman said that not all the employees had reported to work, but enough had ventured in to keep the shop open.
Not everyone has left the city; customers are still coming in to fix their cars, he said.
In the upstairs office, employees note they are very well protected by strong walls. Pointing to the windows, Ishay Palladi noted they were made of a special protective plastic that even a sledgehammer couldn't break.
"A pizza delivery boy is in more danger than we are," he said.