Life under the rockets: How an Israeli and a Palestinian prepare for the unthinkable

GAZA

Mohammed Gazi in Gaza

I am only 33 years old, yet I have lived in Gaza through three wars and watched the deadly border protests known as the Great March of Return. Now, a fourth war is going on all around me.

This week feels like the worst so far. I cannot sleep for more than an hour continuously because of the airstrikes.

On the Gaza Strip the bombing is everywhere, and in Gaza there is no safe place to hide. Missiles fall on buildings, attic towers and homes, and in Gaza there are no shelters.

When the bombing begins, we all run to a small corridor in my house and sit in it until it ends. It's the best we have. Sometimes we spend 30 minutes and sometimes we spend an hour there - because, I say it again, there are no shelters in Gaza.

This is not to mention the power outages and the loss of the internet. Sometimes we do not know what is happening outside. There are no apps or warning texts let alone connectivity. We can't charge our phones in any case, and have little access to running water due to the falling bombs.

I feel confused now. I think a lot about my children and my family and always ask my mind a question: how long will this last? What will happen in the future? Will there be a future for my children? I am 33 years old and have never seen a plane or even a train in my life, and I can hardly find work.

I have been taking a shower for 12 years, based on the electricity schedule. How long will this continue? When will we gain the freedom to live with dignity, to travel, to learn and to work?

At this time, the Palestinian Ministry of Health has announced that the Israeli raids have killed 120 people, more than 30 of them children, and there were 540 injuries.

I don't know how our health system will handle all this as we go through the second wave of coronavirus.

We love life, we love work, we want to launch rockets into space, invent new medicines, contribute to scientific research. All most ordinary Gazans seek is an opportunity.

TEL AVIV

Eylon Levy in Tel Aviv

I woke up with a jolt on Friday morning, worrying I’d slept through the alarm — not my alarm clock, but the air raid siren.

On the night between Thursday and Friday, the 190 rockets were fired from Gaza at Israel. For the first time in three nights, they didn’t reach as far as Tel Aviv. But I could hear muffled interceptions in the distance.

On Tuesday night, I was woken up by the terrifying wail of the “Red Alert” rocket siren at 3am. That was the signal giving me 90 seconds to run to the bomb shelter in my building. I kept my bedroom door open, light on in the corridor, and no latch on the door so I could sprint out of my flat and down two flights of stairs. I can’t imagine having to pick two kids up from their beds and make the same frenzied escape, although considering Israelis closer to the Gaza Strip have mere seconds to run — 90 seconds is a small luxury.

All new flats in Israel must be built with their own rocket shelters, made of reinforced concrete, with a thick steel plate over the window and a heavy door. Older buildings, like mine, have a communal bomb shelter for all the neighbours. Friends and family in even older buildings had to simply hide in the stairwell or the deepest room in the building.

We should be safe in the bomb shelter, but that’s small comfort when you hear explosions overhead from the Iron Dome interceptions, and the walls tremble. Footage that went viral on social media showed Star Wars-type battles over the skies of Tel Aviv, as the missile interception system blew Hamas’s rockets out of the sky.

The “Home Front Command” app was blaring non-stop. The app tracks your exact location, and if a rocket is expected to hit your area, it makes a loud siren noise, even if your phone is on mute.

It turned out 130 rockets were fired at Tel Aviv in the space of a few minutes to try to overwhelm the Iron Dome system.

Projectiles got too close for comfort. A rocket hit a building just around the corner, less than a mile away. A young man was taking a shower when he heard the siren, and hesitated for slightly too long whether to run for shelter. At the last minute, he decided to grab a towel and leapt into his flat’s safe room.

When he slammed the door, the building shook from an almighty explosion--that apparently hit the shower he was just in. He had to crawl through the rubble with a towel around his waist and be donated clothes by neighbours downstairs. He assumed his dog had been incinerated, but thankfully it had escaped and was safe.

The situation inside Gaza sounds terrifying, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Tonight, I’m sleeping with the app on full volume next to my head. Just in case. --