RAGE REIGNS

Neither Israel nor Hamas in Palestine is even thinking of a cessation to the hostilities anytime soon

- REKHA DIXIT

Parul Rathee, a 25-year-old Indian student at Tel Aviv University, will never forget May 11. She and her friends had a plan for the evening—dance classes—and she casually asked them whether it would be safe, given the rockets Hamas was sending. They laughed and said: “This is Tel Aviv, we are far from the border.”

However, later that evening, one of her friends got an alert on a smartphone app that there could be rockets coming their way within minutes. It all happened so fast, she said. Suddenly, the night sky was lit up with rockets. Her friends dragged her to the nearest house and the owners hustled the whole group of strangers into their underground bomb shelter, no questions asked.

“We stayed like that for the next two hours, and we could hear booms outside,” said Rathee, who was terribly shaken by the experience. Then, the noises dimmed, and they stepped out. The rockets had been deflected and there was no damage done. Her friend—an Arab Israeli—coolly headed to her car and dropped the others home.

In the days hence, Rathee's fear of living under siege has fast disappeared. She may not follow the routine as matter-of-factly as Israelis, but she is getting there. “Living here is not as scary as it seems from the outside,” she said. Almost 60 per cent of Israeli homes have bomb shelters, there are also several in public areas. These are either underground or, if above ground, made of reinforced metal. The app which alerted Rathee's friend is courtesy of the Israeli Home Front Command. It is GPS-enabled and provides real-time alerts. It may not always give enough reaction time, but sometimes even a two-minute warning is enough to evade death.