{"id":558145,"date":"2026-07-24T23:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T23:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/558145\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T23:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T23:29:09","slug":"israelis-enjoy-the-summer-despite-heat-wave-potential-war-with-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/558145\/","title":{"rendered":"Israelis enjoy the summer despite heat wave, potential war with Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oren Pesso, a Tel Aviv performance artist and the frontman of the avant-garde musical group Jilber and the Cats, opened his performance on Friday at HaTanacha Park in Tel Aviv<\/a> with a difficult question.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you want the heat or the war? You have to pick one,\u201d he called out to the crowd, before beginning to sing alongside his bandmate daughter, both of them wearing cat ears as part of their regular costumes.<\/p>\n

Israel is notching its highest temperatures of the summer, with the mercury reaching 112 degrees in Tel Aviv earlier this week. At the same time, hostilities between the United States and Iran<\/a> have been heating up and, after several weeks in which Iran has targeted multiple other Middle East countries, the war could soon reach Israel once again.<\/p>\n

In anticipation of potential strikes, several Israeli cities have reopened their municipal bomb shelters<\/a>, which have been closed since shortly after the US-brokered ceasefire on June 17. So far, Israel\u2019s Home Front Command, which tells civilians how to stay safe in moments of crisis, has not issued any specific new instructions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that he would travel to the United States<\/a> on Monday ahead of a meeting with US President Donald Trump, prompting speculation that the threat of an Iranian strike was receding.<\/p>\n

\"OrenOren Pesso sings with his daughter Renee and his avant-garde musical ensemble, Jilber and the Cats, in Tel Aviv, July 24, 2026. (credit: Theia Chatelle)<\/p>\n

The United States and Iran resumed their conflict two weeks ago. The US Central Command completed its 13th consecutive night of strikes on Iran overnight Thursday, and Iran retaliated Friday morning, launching drones at US military targets in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.<\/p>\n

Exactly why Israel has not yet been ensnared in the renewed exchange of fire is not clear, but both Iran and the United States have reasons to keep Israel out, even as Israeli officials emphasize that they do not think the war curbed the Iranian nuclear threat. Iran knows that targeting Israel would escalate the conflict, andTrump is trying to sustain his Iran campaign amid dwindling public support for Israel.<\/p>\n

Israelis in limbo pending potential Iran conflict\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Israelis, the situation has yielded a state of suspended animation, akin to the eve of the war in February.<\/p>\n

Now, Tehran has announced that if the United States expands its strikes on the country, it will retaliate against Israel. With additional American strikes expected, and a likely Iranian response designed to exact a higher price for each round of tit-for-tat escalation, Israeli analysts and officials are increasingly speculating that Israel will be drawn back into the fighting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really felt like it was going to happen on Tisha B\u2019Av,\u201d Dorit, who declined to give her last name, told JTA at the performance, referring to the Jewish day of communal mourning that this year landed on Thursday. \u201cIt\u2019s the worst day, the worst luck, so why not shoot a missile at us then?\u201d<\/p>\n

Pesso, the performance artist, who lives in the suburb of Bat Yam, said that because his apartment has a mamad, the reinforced safe room required in newer Israeli construction, he feels relatively secure in the case of resumed fighting. But he summed up the feeling of many of the Israelis who spoke with JTA when he said, \u201cWe\u2019re really just sick of it. I get that they hate us and want the Jewish state gone, but the idea of another round of missiles coming, it\u2019s just too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamads, too, only provide so much protection, Pesso pointed out. Miming an explosion with his hands, he said, \u201cIf a missile hits here, we go boom too. Not much it can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is not wrong. Unlike the shorter-range rockets that Hezbollah has fired at Israel, the far more powerful ballistic missiles Iran launched during the last round of fighting can destroy a mamad outright, as happened in a June 2025 strike on Beersheba, when a direct hit on an apartment building killed four people sheltering in their safe rooms and injured at least 22 others.<\/p>\n

Added to the danger this time is Iran\u2019s increased use of cluster munitions, which scatter dozens of submunitions over a wide radius and have indiscriminately hit civilian population centers in Israel. Of the two dozen Israeli civilians killed in Iranian strikes since February, 10 were killed by cluster submunitions.<\/p>\n

Exact figures on the toll of Iranian strikes on Israel during the last round of fighting are difficult to know, in part because of restrictions imposed by Israel\u2019s military censor, but at least 28 Israelis were killed and more than 4,000 injured.<\/p>\n

Just last week, that toll grew. Michael Katz, an 82-year-old Haifa resident critically wounded in one of the largest attacks on Israel during the war, an April 5 missile strike on his apartment building that also killed four members of one family, succumbed to his wounds at the city\u2019s Rambam Hospital.<\/p>\n

IDF at ‘maximum readiness’ for war with Iran<\/p>\n

This week the IDF moved from high alert to \u201cmaximum readiness,\u201d and the municipalities of Ramat Gan and Karmiel opened all of their public shelters in anticipation of incoming fire from Iran, even as the Home Front Command\u2019s guidelines for civilians remained unchanged.<\/p>\n

If the price of oil is any marker of how financial markets rate the odds of renewed fighting, Brent crude settled above $100 a barrel on Thursday for the first time since May, after Iran\u2019s Houthi allies in Yemen declared a blockade and attacked Saudi tankers near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.<\/p>\n

The defense establishment is speaking loudly. \u201cIf Iran attacks Israel, it will suffer a crushing blow,\u201d Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Thursday after a security assessment with the IDF\u2019s top brass. Municipal officials, meanwhile, are quietly preparing for war. In the space between the two, life goes on as normal.<\/p>\n

Gideon Alon, 49, who was visiting Tel Aviv on Friday from a kibbutz near Akko in Israel\u2019s north, said, \u201cI am far from a pacifist. We need to end this now, and it is obvious they don\u2019t want peace, so ma la\u2019asot \u2014 what can you do?\u201d<\/p>\n

He worries about his family and the impact of the war on his children. \u201cThis time it could be easier, since school is out for the summer,\u201d he said. \u201cDuring the last round they missed so much class.\u201d<\/p>\n

His wife, a family doctor in Haifa, carries most of the family\u2019s worry, he added. \u201cBut it feels like we have been having this conversation for months,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know what to think, or when it will happen. But when it does, it does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Either way, they are prepared. Living just 7.5 miles from the border with Lebanon, the war \u201cnever really ended for us,\u201d he said. The family mamad remains ready for use as it was on the last day of the fighting with Hezbollah, before Israel signed a separate ceasefire with Lebanon in that war on June 26.<\/p>\n

Back in Tel Aviv, as is the case on even the hottest days of the summer, the beaches were packed on Friday evening. Israel\u2019s Meteorological Service warned of heavy heat stress for most of the week, the hottest of the summer so far.<\/p>\n

Sarah Cohen, 25, who lives in Yafo and moved to Israel from France, is emblematic of Tel Aviv\u2019s carefree atmosphere. She spoke with JTA on her way to Maaravi Beach, the southernmost stretch of sand before the official start of Jaffa.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not really focused on what\u2019s happening with that,\u201d she said of the war.<\/p>\n

Surf conditions on Friday were some of the best of the summer, with swells climbing to nearly six feet, uncharacteristic for the calm Mediterranean beach scene.<\/p>\n

Cohen ran into the surf at Maaravi, where dozens of other surfers were doing their best to catch the waves, and waved back. Still no missiles overhead, for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oren Pesso, a Tel Aviv performance artist and the frontman of the avant-garde musical group Jilber and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,54,2407,85,87,46,43,20980],"class_list":["post-558145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-donald-trump","tag-heat","tag-il","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558145","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=558145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}