Dispatch from Tel Aviv: Israel shelters through overnight Iranian missile barrage

It’s strange what you notice when the missiles start falling.

In Tel Aviv on Friday night, I found myself crouched in a hotel car park, surrounded by strangers in beachwear and Shabbat best, all united by the same hope: that the Iron Dome would keep doing its job.

Just moments before, I’d watched missiles streak across the sky above the Mediterranean. Slicing the night air, the rockets looked like something out of a computer simulation until you remembered what it meant. People at a nearby bar stood and watched; I ran to shelter.

Overnight, Iran launched around 200 ballistic missiles, many seemingly aimed at Tel Aviv. Much of the salvo was intercepted, but three civilians were killed and over 70 wounded.

Among the dead was 73-year-old Yisrael Aloni, killed early Saturday morning when a missile struck his street in Rishon Lezion. Another, Etti Cohen Angel, died when a missile slammed into an apartment building in Ramat Gan.

In Tel Aviv, I found myself diving into two different shelters on five separate occasions through the night.

Inside the first shelter I entered, which was the car park of an upscale beachfront hotel, people carried down plates of Shabbat dinner, as dog walkers and those who had just been swimming in the sea joined them in the stuffy underground.

After a few moments, some impatient Tel Avivians resurfaced. Others like me lingered, waiting for some sort of signal that it was safe. But with no mobile reception in the car park, it was hard to tell. I struck up conversation with an American woman visiting the Jewish State on business. Like me, she had no signal – but her Apple Watch buzzed with laundry alerts from back in the Midwest.

Another woman sitting on the curb next to me showed me videos from October 2024. She had been driving when Iran launched 200 ballistic missiles at targets in Israel eight months ago. “This is Israel,” she says matter-of-factly, as I stroke her little Chihuahua dog. The threat from Iran and its proxies is a grim constant in Israeli life.

A dimly lit shelter keeping Israelis safe in the early hours of Saturday morning (Photo: J Prinsley)[Missing Credit]

Inside the car park, children and pets sat quietly beside the elderly. Everyone listened closely to the staccato soundtrack of the Iron Dome’s duel with Iran: boom, boom, boom.

Down in that surreal subterranean world, with missiles raining above us, the Israeli resilience was unmistakable. Here, resilience is not a virtue, it is a requirement, and as much a part of the infrastructure as the many underground spaces ready to protect the population.

Later, back in bed, I was roused twice more – at around 3am and then again after 5. Each time I scrambled back to shelter. Different car park, same alarms. I was the only one in pyjamas. Do Israelis always sleep fully dressed, ready to run?

By the final visit to the car park, the mood had shifted. People were subdued and the adrenaline had drained away. This is psychological warfare. Iran fired not just rockets but terror, timed to strike deep into the civilian night.

Scrolling the news, I saw photos of the destruction in Ramat Gan, a few miles from where I was. The kind of damage that could tear through even reinforced safe rooms. I don’t know what it would do to a car park.

When I returned to bed, sleep would not come. I imagined the hiss of missiles zeroing in. That moment: lying still, listening, knowing you won’t have time to make it to shelter. They say you have 90 seconds in Tel Aviv, but it hadn’t been that long when I saw the sky above me light up with fire.

By morning, the streets of the city were subdued. People stayed close to home, braced for another strike. I went to the beach.

The sun was blazing and the water inviting. Then a police officer arrived and began packing up the chairs and loungers. “We don’t want people to gather – we’re at war,” he told a group of sunbathing men in Speedos. I asked if I should leave, he said I could do as I liked, but the chairs were going. I took the hint.

By early afternoon, the order to stay near shelters was lifted. But Tel Aviv remained still. A quiet expectancy hangs over the city as we ready for another barrage tonight.