{"id":311810,"date":"2026-02-26T20:21:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T20:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/311810\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T20:21:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T20:21:20","slug":"israelis-live-in-limbo-over-us-iran-negotiations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/311810\/","title":{"rendered":"Israelis live in limbo over US, Iran negotiations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Natalie Silverlieb\u2019s go-bag looks a little different from the last time she ran to the bomb shelter<\/a> with Iranian missiles incoming. Since last summer, she has had a baby, so she now has packed diapers and wipes alongside passports and water.<\/p>\n

But apart from that, she hasn\u2019t done much else to get ready for a possible war, even as US President Donald Trump<\/a> has amassed his forces in the region and threatened to strike Iran, a move sure to trigger a counterattack on Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no preparing,\u201d Silverlieb said. \u201cWhat does that even mean?\u201d The New Jersey native added, \u201cIf anything, we probably should be preparing to get the hell out of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katie Silver has also made some tweaks since the war last summer. Now, she\u2019s not stockpiling toilet paper or canned tuna, but she\u2019s been buying art supplies to while away potential hours in the shelter.<\/p>\n

Silver said she\u2019s become \u201cjaded\u201d and not particularly bothered by the idea of another round of conflict with Iran<\/a>, and she said she wouldn\u2019t mind a few days off from her job as a pilates instructor. Still, she admitted that being alone during sirens is scary.<\/p>\n

\"AA Sudanese-Israeli man and his two daughter’s sleep in their family’s safe room, which they have stocked with dates ahead of a possible war with Iran in February 2026. (credit: Courtesy)<\/p>\n

This time, she said, she will make sure to be with friends, or even better, hunkering down in the bomb shelter with the \u201ctall, dark, handsome Moroccan\u201d who still eludes her, the one she has in the past pictured marrying \u201cbefore a rocket lands on my head.\u201d<\/p>\n

War threats rise over Iran, US negotiations<\/p>\n

As tensions around the possible war simmered this week, fear wasn\u2019t her first response. \u201cIt\u2019s rather exciting, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Silver said.<\/p>\n

And the \u201cLaw and Order: SVU\u201d actress Diane Neal, who moved from the United States to Israel in 2023 and now works as an \u201caliyah ambassador\u201d promoting the move to others, said she was drawing on her experience across multiple disasters, earthquakes, hurricanes, and 9\/11, to encourage Israelis not to run to bomb shelters in flip flops.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy real things to suggest are the sturdiest shoes because you\u2019re always walking over debris, some sort of light or headlamp \u2026 and then a sturdy pair of gloves, because you\u2019ve got to get things out of the way,\u201d she said. She also joked that she had imported a giant container of melatonin from Costco to hand out to neighbors in their shared shelter to help them relax despite the danger.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing worse than being around a bunch of stressed-out people when there\u2019s nothing you can do,\u201d Neal said.<\/p>\n

Beyond considering their shelter plans, some Israelis have been making plans to leave, to Europe, to the United States, even to Eilat, before flights are canceled again. Others are doing the opposite, scrapping trips abroad, afraid of getting stuck outside the country if the airspace closes.<\/p>\n

For those with no plans to leave Israel, even getting out of its population centers, which sustained multiple direct hits the last time, feels like a good idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wants to be in this city again when bombs are dropping,\u201d said Tzvi, a Tel Aviv resident who declined to give his last name.<\/p>\n

Iranian strikes on Israel killed 28 people last summer, including four women in an Arab town in northern Israel; a Ukrainian family that had come for cancer treatment for their daughter; and an activist at her home in Beersheba. Many others lost their homes. Buildings in Tel Aviv were reduced to rubble.<\/p>\n

That was during a 12-day war that Israel initiated by striking Iranian nuclear facilities. Reports suggest that US officials believe a new campaign could be longer, and that Iran has many more missiles now than it did at the beginning of June last year.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, support from Israel\u2019s neighbors, including the right to use their airspace for missile defense, is less assured. And if Trump seeks to topple the Islamic Republic regime or kill its supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hezbollah says it would join the fight, reopening a front on Israel\u2019s north.<\/p>\n

The result is a complex assessment for many Israelis: A war could result in regime change for one of their country\u2019s most devoted enemies, but the cost is likely to be steep.<\/p>\n

For now, though, there is just the waiting. Three weeks ago, Tzvi noted, everyone said war was imminent. The next week, it wasn\u2019t. A week after that, it was imminent again. Now, with Purim approaching, US and Iranian officials are offering frequent breadcrumbs, and high-stakes negotiations are taking place in Geneva, the sense is that a conflict could begin at any moment.\u00a0Or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like constantly living in a state of limbo,\u201d Tzvi said. \u201cYou are supposed to go on with your life because bombs aren\u2019t dropping, but you can\u2019t go on with your life because you always have in the back of your mind that there might be a war next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

With all the waiting, naturally, come the bets, as people hedge on when the United States will strike, if at all. Many are putting their money on Purim, because, as the writer Sarah Tuttle-Singer succinctly put it in a Facebook post, \u201cDuh.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy miss the opportunity to invoke ancient Persia while pointing at modern Iran? Why waste a perfectly good holiday of existential threat<\/a> and theatrical reversal?\u201d she wrote, invoking the Purim story in which a plot to destroy the Jews is overturned at the last moment, and the regime that permitted the threat is destroyed.<\/p>\n

Arguing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the kind of politician who would want the timing to land with maximum symbolism, she went on, \u201cYes, I know ultimately it\u2019s Ahashverosh, uh, I mean, Trump\u2019s call, when the US strikes, but let\u2019s be real. The President and Prime Minister Netanyahu will be fully aligned.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cFrom ancient Shushan to contemporary Tehran. From Haman to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. You can almost hear the cadence warming up in the teleprompter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tuttle-Singer is not the only Israeli to make the Purim connection. One Orthodox rabbi promised: \u201cThe ancient secrets of the Book of Esther are coming to life before our eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many, the response to the looming threat is less spiritual than practical. But on a social media post asking Israeli women what they were doing to prepare, the answers were a mixed bag.<\/p>\n

A handful answered that they were preparing in earnest, packing everything from portable radios to multiple flashlights, and prompting one commenter to wryly ask whether they were \u201cpreparing for the apocalypse.\u201d<\/p>\n

One woman, posting anonymously, said she was pregnant after three previous losses and terrified her husband would be called up to the army again. Without family nearby and with little Hebrew proficiency, she wrote, she was scared the stress would hurt what she called their \u201cmiracle baby,\u201d and that she was ready to put her family first.<\/p>\n

Many responded with some version of the same thing. They were taking it day by day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019m more worried about things being cancelled than actually getting bombed,\u201d one woman wrote, noting that she had several paid gigs cancelled last June. \u201cWorrying about dying is just too big, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another noted that she was \u201cnot thinking about it,\u201d and went on to say she was \u201ctoo exhausted from the last two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

A third said she wasn\u2019t doing anything special except \u201cenjoying life while we have not-war days\u201d by going into nature.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll have enough time to be anxious and sit at home later. I\u2019m saving and accumulating my energy,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Others said they were focusing on threats they felt they could control. Dani Sarusi bought a steam cleaner. \u201cIf my two kids are going to be home, I need to maintain whatever is left of my sanity and at least have a clean floor,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Roxy Esther Reinstein prepared for the selfie that might outlive her. \u201cI got my hair done cause no damn way Iran is having me looking bad. If I go down, I go down looking pretty,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Some women took the opportunity to vent that in their case, any attempt at war prep began with a negotiation with a skeptical husband.<\/p>\n

\u201cI keep refilling the mamad with survival stuff like water, dry food, etc. And he keeps taking it out of the mamad, saying it\u2019s all \u2018fake news,\u2019 and the war is over,\u201d one woman wrote, referencing the safe room that many apartments have.<\/p>\n

The rooms are not designed to protect against missiles of the type Iran shoots. Another chimed in that her husband subscribed to the view that there was \u201cno need to take precautions because nothing will help if in the statistically unlikely instance the [missile] has your name on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all husbands were dismissive. Hannah said hers had taken the time to work out that the couple and their children could \u201ceach survive on five dates a day,\u201d and had stocked the shelter accordingly, with a couple of crates of dried fruit. She said by text that her Sudanese husband\u2019s great-grandmother had told him that eating soaked dates had helped her and others survive starvation in Darfur.<\/p>\n

Sam, who moved to Israel in January, said she has been training her cats to seek shelter under the bed in the safe room using a WiFi-connected treat dispenser and an audio cue on her phone.<\/p>\n

A cat belonging to a more veteran immigrant would do no such thing, its owner replied. \u201cShe\u2019s so over sirens,\u201d the owner wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Natalie Silverlieb\u2019s go-bag looks a little different from the last time she ran to the bomb shelter with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[16097,49,156224,54,22155,42,87,46,43,40,38,41,39,1032],"class_list":["post-311810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-ayatollah-ali-khamenei","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-bomb-threat","tag-donald-trump","tag-geneva","tag-headlines","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}