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In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, residents volunteer and keep kids at home as streets and supermarket shelves empty out
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Al Hambra Deli, a neighborhood cafe and wine bar in Jaffa, would usually expect to be bustling on this Thursday night, the beginning of the Israeli weekend. Located on Jerusalem Boulevard., one of the city’s main arteries, it’s right on the path of Tel Aviv’s recently opened light-rail system, and not far from a soccer stadium.
But this week, its doors have been shuttered. A sign greets passersby: “Beloved neighborhood, half of us are in the army and half are protecting our homes. We love you and are waiting to return, Staff.”
It’s a mood felt throughout the city and others in Israel’s crowded central region: Five days after an attack by Hamas killed and wounded thousands in the country’s south, streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are chillingly quiet aside from sirens warning of incoming rockets. Schools are closed and residents are yearning for ways to help as they cope with the physical and emotional fallout of the massacre and the war Israel is now fighting against Hamas in Gaza.
Earlier this week, supermarket shelves emptied out as authorities recommended that Israelis stock up on three days’ worth of food. Shufersal, the country’s largest grocery chain, set limits on purchases of bread, bottled water, milk and eggs.
Details of the atrocities in the south continue to emerge, and 300,000 Israelis have been called up for reserve duty. Rockets continue to target Israeli cities, and Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza, as the country girds for what will likely be a prolonged conflict.
“We live in a permanent state of fear,” said Inès Forman, 29, a French-Israeli writer, describing the last week in Tel Aviv. “I feel anxiety and fear in my body every second that I am awake.”
Forman has committed herself to spreading news on social media about Saturday’s massacre. Many of the Instagram posts on her profile are about art or literature, but the images she’s shared over the past 24 hours are of a different kind: widely circulated clips of reporters describing the scenes they’ve encountered in towns on the Gaza border, and photos and video condemning Hamas and its supporters.
“We are working on fighting fake news… basically all day” she says of her new routine, keeping a schedule that involves waking up and starting at “five or six until very late at night. Yesterday, I finished at around one” in the morning.
On Thursday, Forman attended the afternoon funeral of her friend’s younger sister, Shira Eylon, 23, who was presumed captured until her body was discovered in the woods on Wednesday amongst those who were murdered at the massacre at the music festival outside Kibbutz Re’im.
“My beautiful and pure fairy — today you received wings. I love you forever,” her older sister wrote on Instagram, announcing her death.
“There is not anyone who doesn’t have a loved one who’s either been killed, someone who they know, a friend or a loved one, or injured, or taken captive” said Melanie Landau, a 50-year-old Australian-Israeli therapist living in the Baqa neighborhood of Jerusalem. “So many people are on the front line and just worried about their loved ones.”
Many residents have left Tel Aviv, traveling abroad or to an area of Israel farther from Gaza, and have listed their apartments on spreadsheets coordinating housing for refugees from areas in Israel’s north and south that have been evacuated. Several people described the normally crowded city as a “ghost town.”
Some Tel Aviv residents have relocated within the city. Lotte Beilin, a 30-year old British-Israeli news producer, is staying in a friend’s apartment because her own building is older and doesn’t have a bomb shelter. The city streets are “so quiet you can hear a pin drop.”
There are more “uplifting” moments too, Landau said, adding that “the sort of resilience and strength of the human spirit” has been on display this week.
Throughout the country, many efforts are underway to collect needed supplies for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who arrived at their bases lacking some critical resources.
Lee Mangoli, a 32-year-old Canadian-Israeli yoga teacher in Tel Aviv, recalled that “on Sunday we started to come out of shock and I realized I needed to take action to help myself.” She met with a friend and started collecting food and other “basic amenities” like shampoo and socks for soldiers.
Very quickly, she says that their small project “exploded with money coming in from abroad… and we are dealing with a lot of requests from a lot of different bases that cost money.”
While there have not been any issues raising funds, her group has run into difficulties sourcing the supplies. “We are not finding the goods anymore. UPS and Fedex are not delivering to Israel” and certain much-requested items like Leatherman utility knives have been nearly impossible to locate. “I could buy 200 and have soldiers to give them to but nobody has them,” she said.
For others such as Becky Schneck, 36, a physical therapist and mother of four young children, the burden of her husband’s call-up to reserve duty on Saturday, in addition to the closure of schools until further notice, has been too overwhelming to consider volunteering for the war effort.
“I am so busy, I don’t even want to think about it too much,” she said. “I do not have the emotional capacity to deal with everything going on in my house and also everything going on in the country.” Neighbors in her community of Tzur Hadassah, outside Jerusalem, have stepped up to deliver food to families like hers.
While Masa Israel, an umbrella group for gap year programs, said shortly after the massacre that none of its 5,700 fellows were harmed, at least one program has closed — the Yahel Social Change Fellowship, which engages its participants in social action and volunteering across Israel.
“With a heavy heart, the Yahel board and staff have made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend the Yahel Social Change Fellowship until things calm down here,” announced Yahel’s executive director, Dana Talmi.
Others are pressing on. At the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, staff “are doing the best we can… [going] into overdrive to support our students as much as humanly possibly,” said Meesh Hammer-Kossoy, the dean of students. “Pardes is pretty serious about running” in spite of the war. Of the approximately 80 students studying year-long, 18 have joined classes via Zoom from abroad.
“We are resolutely gathering for regular prayer and trying to study as best as we can,” she said.
Landau said that many Israelis are engaged in “a battle of consciousness.”
“There are a lot of people getting overexposed to a lot of the imagery and I think that is part of the battle,” she said. “Not to lose faith in humanity and not to be pulled in by that.”
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
The post Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
The post Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.