Will Sderot become a ghost town?

Today the Upper Galilee town of Kiryat Shemonah, near the border with Lebanon, has a population of some 20,000 people.

However, had everyone sent there in the 1950's, 60's and 70's remained, it would have ten times that many inhabitants, and perhaps be the third or fourth largest city in Israel.

This turnover in population had one major cause - the thousands of katyusha rockets that rained down on the town in the course of a decade.

For obvious reasons, the tense situation didn't appeal to potential residents, and most left at the first opportunity. Those who remained were mostly social welfare cases, families too impoverished to establish themselves somewhere else, …