Three women and a girl from the same family were killed in the Iranian retaliatory attack on Israel. Hassan knew three of them, Manar Khatib and her two daughters, through his role as a high school teacher in Tamra.
It shows how vulnerable we are to the threat of rocket attacks, says Hassan, who is a Palestinian and a board member of Sikkuy-Aufoq, an organization that works for good relations between Arab and Jewish Israelis.
No place to flee
In Tamra, where almost all 37,000 inhabitants are Israeli Arabs (Palestinians with Israeli citizenship), there is not a single public shelter. It is no coincidence, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. It has shown that nearly half of the non-Jewish inhabitants in Israel in 2018 lacked access to a public shelter.
People here feel forgotten and discriminated against. Overall, there is great anger that (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu has started this war instead of working on a long-term solution to the conflict in the Middle East, says Sharaf Hassan to TT from Tamra.
The Khatib family was in a private shelter in their home when the attack occurred. The country's authorities recommend private shelters only when residents do not have time to reach a public one. Hassan was also in a private shelter with his children.
Now when there is a warning of an attack, we are afraid of dying.
Causes anxiety
They are not alone in feeling death anxiety. Dozens of people in Israel have lost their lives and hundreds have been injured since the country started the war against Iran last week. Several buildings have been destroyed, and in Tel Aviv, residents are regularly woken up by air raid sirens.
It has been an incredibly tough morning, says Tel Aviv resident Shlomi Sasson, the night after a hospital in southern Israel was hit in a massive attack wave.
It is stressful and people are afraid of what will happen, but I feel that most people trust our advanced warning and defense system.
But what really gives Sasson death anxiety is not the rocket attacks, but the thought of Iran developing nuclear weapons.
If that happens, it's also the end for Israel. That's why I, and I think many others do, see this war as necessary for our survival, he says.
Cornelia Mikaelsson/TT
Facts: Israel's air defense
TT
Israel has one of the world's most advanced air defense systems – one of the more talked about called "Iron Dome", or "Iron Cupola" in Swedish. But in fact, the defense consists of several layers.
The Iron Cupola is developed to shoot down rockets and drones fired from shorter distances, for example from Gaza or southern Lebanon. The system ignores rockets that are deemed to hit uninhabited areas or the sea, and instead focuses on threats to civilian targets. Over the years, it has achieved an accuracy of around 90 percent.
The two other defense layers – "David's Sling" and "The Arrow" – are built to meet more advanced threats such as ballistic missiles fired from longer distances, for example from Iran. These systems have generally had a lower accuracy, but are crucial to protect Israel from long-range attacks.
