‘It's non-stop': residents of Ramat Aviv describe life amid Iranian bomb strikes
Bystanders stopped and stared at the destruction, some posing for selfies in front of the impact site, other flipping through a diary belonging to one of the building's residents, which had been thrown on the pavement.
'This feels like one long day, it's non-stop,' said Liat, the CFO of an entertainment firm in Tel Aviv, as she surveyed the destruction. 'You have to go to the shelter three or four times in a day. We want to go back to regular life, to have fun again.'
The neighbourhood in Tel Aviv was one of 10 sites hit across Israel on Sunday, in the most intense Iranian barrage yet, which left 23 people injured. It came just a few hours after the US military attacked three nuclear sites in Iran, which it said 'devastated' Iran's nuclear capabilities.
A day after the strike, Israelis were wondering how long the war with Iran would last, as Israeli officials issued contradictory statements.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said on Sunday night: 'Once we achieve the goals, we will not continue beyond what is necessary. But we won't end it prematurely either. We will not be drawn into a war of attrition. But nor will we end this action, this historic operation, before we achieve all its goals.'
Fighting started on 13 June after Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes on Iran in what it said was a military operation designed to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran quickly responded with a barrage of missiles and drones, kicking off a steadily escalating war now in its second week.
Previously, the Israeli military said its goals were to cripple Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programme, as well as stop what they said was an Iranian plan to destroy Israel.
On Monday, it seemed unclear if Israel's goals had expanded, with Donald Trump floating the idea of regime change in a social media post and Israeli strikes on internal security forces' headquarters in Tehran.
In Israeli media, senior defence officials were cited arguing that Israel should seize the opportunity and forge a rigid deal with Iran while it was on the back foot.
To Liat, the prospect of a prolonged war was daunting. Iran, unlike Hamas or Yeman's Houthi rebels, she said, was a proper state with proper missiles. Israel is still fighting in Gaza, where nearly 60,000 people have been killed in its military campaign over the last 20 months – a war launched after the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed 1,200.
Liat said: 'This war has to end. It's been almost a week and a half and its enough. When the Houthis would strike us, we would stay in bed, it wasn't scary. But buildings are collapsing, you think, 'it could be me'.'
Iranian strikes have killed 24 people in Israel and wounded hundreds more. Israeli strikes have killed at least 430 and wounded more than 3,500 in Iran.
Thousands have been displaced across Iran, particularly from the nation's capital, Tehran, which has experienced heavy bombing over the last 10 days.
On Monday, the effects of Sunday's strikes in Israel were still plain to see, with broken glass still littering the promenade of a nearby mall. Many businesses across the country were closed as the Israeli home front limited large gatherings so as to ensure adequate space in bomb shelters distributed across the country.
Life seemed to continue with some sort of normalcy. Across the street from the blast site, people sipped coffee at a cafe, stickers still affixed to the newly installed windowpanes. People jogged on the streets of Tel Aviv as the Israeli military announced that it had just completed a series of strikes in western Iran.
Despite Iran launching missiles at Israel in the morning, there were no injuries from that salvo.
The war with Iran has widespread support in Israel, even among the country's opposition, with Yair Lapid, Israel's opposition leader, praising Israel's strikes as 'justified and necessary'.
There have been very few protests against the war within Israel, particularly as the home office's restrictions prohibited gatherings.
Gil, a 32-year-old tech worker who lives near the strike site in Ramat Aviv, said: 'I think there is a broad understanding that it's absolutely necessary, I don't think any civilian is in any position to say when and how the war should end – we just don't have the data.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
Just 36 aid trucks entered Gaza yesterday, Palestinian officials claim - short of 600 needed
Just 36 aid trucks entered Gaza yesterday - despite the humanitarian situation in the enclave worsening, Palestinian officials have warned. According to the Gazan government's media office, most of the humanitarian supplies were looted and stolen - "as a result of the state of security chaos that the Israeli occupation systematically and deliberately perpetuates". Officials say at least 600 truckloads of aid are required on a daily basis, adding: "The needs of the population are worsening." 1:56 A statement released late last night called for "the immediate opening of crossings, and the entry of aid and infant formula in sufficient quantities" - and "condemned in the strongest terms the continuation of the crime of starvation". Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, refuted this - and accused Hamas of "stirring up a slanderous propaganda campaign against Israel". He said: "The cruelty of Hamas has no boundaries. While the State of Israel is allowing the entry of humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza, the terrorists of Hamas are deliberately starving our hostages and document them in a cynical and evil manner. "The terrorists of Hamas are deliberately starving the residents of the Strip as well, preventing them from receiving the aid." 0:36 It comes as the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza said its headquarters in Khan Younis were hit by an Israeli strike, killing one staff member and injuring three others. Footage posted on social media shows a fire broke out in the building. Indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel for a 60-day ceasefire, and a deal for the release of half the hostages still held in Gaza, ended in deadlock last week. US President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy told the families of the hostages yesterday that he was working with the Israeli government on a plan that would end the war. Steve Witkoff claimed that Hamas was willing to disarm to stop the conflict, despite the group's repeated statements that it would not do so. In response, Hamas said it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established with Jerusalem as its capital. After Mr Witkoff's meeting with the families of the hostages, Hamas released two videos of an emaciated Israeli hostage, Evyatar David, who was abducted from the Nova music festival on 7 October 2023 and has been held in captivity in Gaza since. The 24-year-old looked skeletal, with his shoulder blades protruding from his back. He was heard saying that he had not eaten for three days. The distressing videos show him digging his own grave, he said in the footage.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Keir Starmer's Palestine recognition speech full of colonial arrogance
This week, three-quarters of a century later, the British Prime Minister affirmed the enduring truth of Sayegh's words. In the same breath that Keir Starmer declared statehood to be the inalienable right of the Palestinian people, he confirmed that British recognition will hinge on the actions of the Israeli state: Only if Benjamin Netanyahu and his government continue their campaign of ethnic cleansing will Britain join 147 other countries in recognising [[Palestine]] as a sovereign nation. Speaking in front of two large Union Jacks, the Prime Minister acted with the same colonial arrogance that motivated the British colonisation of Palestine in the early 20th century. Justifying that occupation before the Peel Commission in 1937, Winston Churchill said: 'I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time … I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.' READ MORE: Police remove pro-Palestine protesters from John Swinney's Edinburgh Fringe show Keir Starmer would never say such things. However, for as long as Britain uses Palestinian statehood as a bargaining chip and simultaneously supplies material aid to abet Israel's crimes, the Prime Minister channels Churchill's imperial logic: Dehumanise the Palestinians in order to justify the denial of their right to self-determination. In Gassan Kanafani's novella, Returning To Haifa, Said, the protagonist, asks his wife, Safiyya: 'Do you know what homeland is? It is where nothing like this happens.' Since October 2023, the Palestinian homeland has been decimated – 70,000 tonnes of explosives have been dropped on the Gaza Strip; 4000 buildings have been demolished in the Occupied West Bank. The conditions necessary for human habitation of that homeland have been systematically erased too. Gaza, the UN acknowledges, is now 'the hungriest place on earth'. As the direct consequence of intentional decisions by a nuclear power, the mass starvation of Gaza is, as Professor Adam Tooze points out, 'quite unlike that anywhere else in the world'. In Yemen, Sudan and Haiti – among the places where hunger is most acute – the share of the population at risk is between 49% and 57%. In Gaza, the share is 100%. The declared objective of Israel's genocide is to deny the Palestinian people even the hope of a homeland. Last week, the British state served that aim, conferring the right to decide Palestine's future not to the land's people, but to its illegal occupier. Deploying the language of universal human rights to strip the Palestinian people of their agency, Keir Starmer's duplicitous designs offer Benjamin Netanyahu an olive branch. By delaying any decision regarding recognition until the UN General Assembly meets in September, the British government has afforded the Israeli government six more weeks of impunity. Keir Starmer will only recognise Palestine as a last-ditch attempt to salvage what little faith remains in the 'rules-based international order'. To do so would involve committing the cardinal sin of humanising a population whose erasure the British state has licensed, supported and participated in for decades. If the British state is to concede that Palestinians, like the rest of the world, have the right to self-determination, then Keir Starmer and his Cabinet have a series of uncomfortable questions to answer. To this day, imperialism's serial dispossession of the Palestinians has rested on the explicit understanding that they do not enjoy the same rights as the rest of us. The question of recognition – and Keir Starmer's attitude to it – forces this contradiction to the surface for all to see. Since last year's General Election, the question of Palestine has posed serious challenges to the Labour leader's premiership. Confronted by a mass movement to end Israel's genocide, the Prime Minister has taken every possible step to evade accountability – including the criminalisation of peaceful protest. Last week's announcement is no different. The foreign policy of the British state – which has conducted more surveillance flights over Gaza than even Israel – is not, as far as our government is concerned, up for debate. Indeed, Britain's subjugation to the United States is such that the interests of imperialism have always sat outside the realms of our democracy. By cynically gesturing toward recognising the Palestinian state, Keir Starmer hopes to ease popular domestic pressure while not straying from the broad position of the Trump administration. The Palestine solidarity movement can have no truck with such colonial parlour games.
The Independent
4 hours ago
- The Independent
India to defy Trump's threats and keep buying Russian oil, government sources say
India will keep purchasing oil from Russia, despite President Donald Trump threatening to impose penalties for doing so, two Indian officials said on Saturday Officials in India, the most populous country on Earth, told Reuters and That contradicted a statement from Trump, who on Friday told reporters his understanding was that India would 'no longer' be buying oil from Russia. "These are long-term oil contracts," an unnamed Indian official told Reuters. "It is not so simple to just stop buying overnight.' Last week, Trump said India would face unspecified penalties for buying Russian oil in addition to a 25 percent tariff on goods. However, China and Turkey, two countries that also purchase large amounts of Russian oil, have not faced similar penalty threats. India drastically increased its import of Russian oil after the Kremlin invaded Ukraine in 2022, while many other countries began to cut back it's imports. The cheap availability of Russian oil allowed India to reduce its reliance on other countries, such as Saudi Arabia or Iraq, who typically sell to Asian countries at a higher price. While India faced criticisms for doing so, the general consensus around India's increase in imports has been that it helps avoid a global surge in oil prices. It's unclear why exactly Trump has targeted India in reducing its import of Russian oil. The president has recently expressed frustrations with Russian President Vladimir Putin for failing to come to the peace talks table to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine. On Friday, India's external affairs spokesperson Randdhir Jaiswal said India and Russia had a 'time-tested partnership' and that India was analyzing its energy sourcing. "On our energy sourcing requirements ... we look at what is there available in the markets, what is there on offer, and also what is the prevailing global situation or circumstances," Jaiswal said, according to Reuters. India heavily relies on energy imports to sustain the needs of it's more than one billion population. It imports more than one million barrels per day.
