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The city, largely liberal and lay, has a reputation for being a hedonistic bubble, but over the next week, Tel Aviv has been the target of at least 160 rockets.
By Isabel Kershner
TEL AVIV – Tel Aviv City Council presented this month a fun crusade on social media pointing to itself as a vaccinated city eager to welcome foreign travelers on their first trips after the coronavirus.
That’s before the rockets started hitting.
During the following week of fighting between Israel and militant teams in Gaza, Tel Aviv has been targeted by at least 160 rockets fired from the Palestinian coastal enclave about 40 miles south.
The bombing of Tel Aviv was a devastating turn of occasions for a bustling city that presents itself as the city of Israel’s uninterrupted feast on the Mediterranean and the country’s monetary center. Over the weekend, rocket alerts and launches sent crowds of bathers to protection and shut down many. of the city’s famous restaurants and bars.
Tel Aviv has been targeted by rocket fire in previous battles, but with intensity comparable to that of recent days, and although the army says its Iron Dome missile defense formula intercepts about 90% of rockets heading to populated areas, when they are giant Prey has chimneys, some escape.
Shahar Elal, 30, a returning Israeli woman for a circle of relatives who scales from her existing home in Zurich, said she and her mother rushed to take refuge in a protected domain, the kitchen of a café on the beach, when a siren sounded on Saturday afternoon, frightened. having been caught off guard.
“Beer in hand, sunscreen on the face, we ran,” he says, dropping a wallet along the way. When they were given, they saw the trail of white smoke from a rocket that fell into the sea in front of them.
One day last week, during business hours, militants fired about a hundred rockets at and around Tel Aviv, saying they were responding to Israeli airstrikes opposed to what they described as civilian buildings.
The incoming chimney sent nearly one million Israelis to air-raid shelters and areas. On Saturday, a man, Gershon Franko, 55, died of shrapnel after a rocket hit the middle of the road outside his apartment in the leafy tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan.
Often known as the “State of Tel Aviv”, this largely liberal lay beach, the city and its metropolitan dominance have long had a reputation for being indifferent to the risks of the country’s less rich and more peripheral regions that are close to its volatile borders. A lot of people in this town of skateboarding, surfing and electric scooters would live in a hedonistic bubble.
“It’s a kind of escape,” said Sagi Assaraf, 31, a medical engineer, explaining the state of his brain in Tel Aviv as he sat on the beach with a beer and friends on Sunday, a day after everyone had to flee in the same way. stretch of sand in search of refuge.
“At the end of the day, those are other people who just need to live in peace and quiet,” he said, adding, “The explosions shook them. “
He and his friend Ben Levy, 32, a graphic designer who played guitar, had performed their mandatory military service on the fighting sets and said they were not unmoved by rocket fire.
Major General Uri Gordin, head of the Inner Front Military Command, said he believed more rockets had been fired at Tel Aviv rule on Saturday night than the 50-day war in Gaza in the summer of 2014.
Many locals spoke of resistance and defiance, saying that apparent weakness and concern would give the enemy a victory.
“We want to stay positive and continue our routines,” Levy said.
Even in Ramat Gan, on the block where the fatal rocket hit, investors and local citizens showed composure.
Menachem Horovitz, owner of a small café and bakery on the street and lives around the corner, marries in the afternoon when he heard the siren followed by a roar that shook the whole house.
The wounded man went out to the bakery. ” The police came,” he said impartially. I cleaned up and put everything in place. “
Saturday was Nakba Day, when Palestinians commemorated the flight and expulsion of thousands of Palestinian refugees, hostilities surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948.
On Sunday morning, Mr Horovitz had replaced the damaged glass in his shop window and almost sold out with cakes for the Shavuot Jewish holiday since sunset.
A handwritten sign on the window read: “Thanks to the other people of Ramat Gan for their support. The other people of Israel live,” scored through a star of David with a point or exclamation point.
In a nearby building, all the windows facing the front had been blown up, shrapnel had pierced the refrigerator at the back of an apartment, like a bullet, the locals had fled leaving their lunch half-eaten on the table. all citizens with transitional accommodation in hotels.
Ms. Elal, the guest from Zurich, stays with her circle of relatives from northern Israel on a beach holiday rental and returns to the beach on Sunday.
“There’s no point in avoiding our lives,” he said, adding that he had never noticed tel Aviv’s streets or beaches so quiet and empty on a festive weekend. Tel Aviv had returned to his parents’ homes in the north, a country that suffered the most rocket attacks from Lebanon.
Josh Corcos, 30, Shai Asraf, 29, and Yuval Mengistu, an Israeli friend visiting Mexico, were sitting Sunday at the same beach café where Ms. Elal had taken refuge the day before. Asraf was from Netivot, a southern city that was targeted by rocket attacks from Gaza.
They had been dining French toast and Eggs Benedict in a breakfast spot open all day when the sirens sounded on Saturday afternoon. They took cover, went out 20 minutes later and went back to dinner, they said.
Some other people panicked more than others said.
“We were all in the army, so we don’t care so much,” Corcos said of rocket launching, “but still, he’s not expected in the middle of breakfast in Tel Aviv. “
That night, Hamas issued a warning that tel Avivn citizens would return home by midnight and the three men returned to their rented vacation apartment at 11:30 p. m. 11 minutes after midnight, sirens sounded and more rocket bursts headed towards tel aviv area.
“Four days ago, the general of the city and jumping, ” said Asraf. “There’s been a replacement since the rockets fell. Most people stay home. “
City said they were confident that tourism will recover in due course.
But when the sun began to descend into the Mediterranean, the streets of Tel Aviv, full of revelers, were strangely deserted. The nonstop city had stopped, at least temporarily.
Irit Pazner Garshowitz contributed to the from Jerusalem.
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