A FORMER Mount St. Agnes Academy student is staying put in the under-fire Israeli city of Haifa ? despite the pleas of her brother and sister in Bermuda for her to come to the safety of the island to avoid the violence raging in the Middle East.

Margaretha Vinakur said she wanted to remain for the sake of her sons, one of whom is serving in the Israeli Army.

Rockets fired by Hizbollah fighters based in Lebanon have rained on the northern city of Haifa since violence erupted some three weeks ago ? one or two have landed within a mile of her home.

Dozens of citizens have been killed or injured in the attacks, as around 1,400 rockets have been fired at northern Israel in the past 15 days. Ms Vinakur said the atmosphere was tense and fearful.

She also sympathised with innocent Lebanese citizens, dozens of whom have been killed in massive Israeli air raids aimed at Hizbollah fighters in the southern suburbs of Beiruit and across southern Lebanon.

Ms Vinakur, an aromatherapist, is a Dutch national who came to Bermuda with her family at the age of 12 and lived here for about eight years. She graduated from Mount St. Agnes in 1974 and has a sister, Esther Young, and a brother, fisherman Nicholas New, who still live in Bermuda.

Speaking from her home, Ms Vinakur described what it was like to inhabit a city living in fear.

"I've never seen the streets so quiet," Ms Vinakur said on Wednesday afternoon. "The sirens have already sounded four times today and most people are just staying at home.

"There are very few cars on the streets and most of the shops are closed."

She lives in a ground-floor apartment in a three-storey building in a central area of the city. She does not have a bomb shelter, but her neighbours do. Like everyone else around her, she feels vulnerable.

"When the sirens sound, it means that there is a rocket on its way," she said. "You listen to hear it land and you don't always hear it. Sometimes they miss, I think.

"When the sirens sound, some of the older people who remember past wars can go crazy. The younger generation seems less scared.

"When a rocket lands close the explosion is deafening and it makes the building shake and the windows rattle. One explosion made me fall out of bed."

The guerrilla forces' missiles are not precision bombs and the random nature of their trajectories does nothing to ease the fear in Haifa.

"You can hear the boom when they explode far away, but a couple landed within 1.5 or two kilometres and that really shook the building," Ms Vinakur said.

Ms Vinakur moved to Haifa two years ago, ironically to escape the effects of terrorism. She had been living in Kibbutz Gilgal, in the Jordan Valley for the previous ten years.

"The situation was bad there with the Palestinians and there was a lot of trouble during the Intafada (uprising)," she said. "I lost quite a few friends in the trouble.

"Sometimes when I was driving around, I saw the Palestinians being humiliated at the checkpoints. That was sad, because not everybody is a terrorist, it is just a small minority.

"So I came to Haifa and now the problem is Hizbollah. Israel is not to blame and Lebanon is not to blame. Terrorists are to blame for what is happening.

"I feel for the Lebanese people who are being hurt and killed by the bombs as well. The problem is that the terrorists are living in their country. Most Arabs and Israelis want to live together in peace.

"Israel is a very small country, surrounded by Arab nations, and we always feel under threat. But personally, I feel confident in the Israeli Army, as it's a strong and modern force."

Apart from her brother and sister in Bermuda, Ms Vinakur has a daughter in England and a son in Holland, but despite her relatives urging her to get out, she said she felt duty-bound to stay.

"I have had invitations to go out to Bermuda, but if I was there I would just be very nervous sitting around watching the 24-hour news channels all the time," she said.

"In Haifa, I know exactly what is happening. My duty is to be here for my two sons."