That’s because however charming and stunning its beaches are, it lacked the prime asset for a potential coastal city — a natural harbour like nearby Acre and Tyre. 

But tucked neatly behind the city’s externals, which include café life, hopeful fishermen casting lines into the surf and unforgettable sunsets through the pristine air, are well-kept and lovingly maintained synagogues.

They lack one thing — the patina of age.

For they were all established and developed within living memory.

Residents include Nahariya’s founding German-Jewish immigrants from the 1930s, waves of Mizrahi immigrants in the 1950s, which were later augmented by olim from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia.

They were supplemented, from 2000, by many Israeli South Lebanon Army personnel who withdrew from Lebanon a very short distance away.

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