Commentators inside Israel described a sense of business as usual in the wake of the country’s joint strikes with the United States against Iran.
“It’s Saturday, so the streets are naturally quiet,” said political analyst Ori Goldberg from outside Tel Aviv, returning from his shelter for the second time.
“Politically, I think there is a sense of triumph in having attacked an enemy regime. Not because we have invested too much in the future of the Iranian people, but because we have devalued human life through the genocide on Gaza,” he said, referring to Israeli attacks on the besieged territory since October 2023.
Returning to shelters across the country is now a matter of daily life for most Israelis, he said.
Israel has been on high alert since launching a wave of attacks on Iran, which its leaders have consistently portrayed as its enemy for decades.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who announced the attack via a video post on X, framed the attack in typically apocalyptic terms, saying that Israel and the US launched the attacks to eliminate the existential threat posed (to Israel) by the terrorist regime in Iran, and called on the Iranian people to rise up against their own leaders.
Iran has retaliated with its own missiles and drones against Israeli and US assets in the region. At least one person was reported injured in northern Israel.
But the latest strikes against Iran were met with enthusiasm by Israel’s political elite.
“I want to remind all of us: The people of Israel are strong. The IDF (Israeli Army) and the Air Force are strong. The strongest power in the world stands with us,” opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on social media, referring to the US.
“In moments like these we stand together – and we win together. There is no coalition and opposition, one people and one IDF, behind whom we all stand.”
In a later post written in Farsi, he echoed the prime minister’s calls for Iran to implement regime change from within, a longstanding Israeli policy.
‘This is madness’
Accounts of relative calm in Israel stand in sharp contrast to previous escalations, when sources described panic and massive buying ahead of an expected Iranian response to a wave of strikes launched by Israel against targets in Iran.
“The people here are well trained,” Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament representing the leftist Hadash-Tal faction, who is almost alone in opposing the strike, said from her apartment near Haifa after returning from her asylum.
“This is what they say all the time in the media: how well trained and prepared we are. It’s crazy. I don’t think any country in the world has been through more war than us, so they mean ‘trained,'” he said, referring to the wars on Iran, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza.
As Touma-Suleiman spoke, her phone was interrupted by an alarm. “That’s not an alert. It’s an alert on my phone and then an alert saying I have to go back to the shelter,” she explained, laughing. “See what I mean about well trained?”
Dispatching from Israel, Ahron Bregman, a senior lecturer in the war studies department at King’s College London, described the relative calm and almost relief felt by many inside the country that the uncertainty over the war with Iran was over.
“Both Israel and the US are after Iranian leadership. They hope to weaken it significantly, although I doubt they can topple it from the air,” he said, raising the possibility of a protracted conflict.
However, Touma-Suleiman said it was uncertain how prepared Israel would be for a protracted war and whether that would be Israel’s choice.
“It will be the United States that decides how long the war will last. They will continue until they get what they want,” he said.
“I don’t think Israel is ready for that. The people are tired. The army is tired. I don’t know if they have the reserves to maintain a long war, and Netanyahu is willing to gamble with this, so he can tell the public before the election: ‘Here’s at least one win’.”
(tags to translate)news
