On the evening of March 14, sirens went off throughout the Tel Aviv metro area, shattering the calm indifference of Israel’s secular hub. At first, residents were convinced it was a mistake. Sirens? In Tel Aviv? Most people out on the street did not follow standing instructions to run for cover into a nearby building, a shelter or concrete-enforced safe room that all newer Israeli homes are supposed to have. Tel Avivians have not heard such sirens since the war with the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014, unlike residents of the southern town of Sderot and neighboring kibbutzim on the Gaza border where alarms go off periodically alerting them to incoming rockets.
Several loud explosions reverberated throughout the area soon after the clamoring alarm, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis suddenly realized this was no mistake. It took the chief military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Ronen Manelis, an embarrassingly long time to announce that rockets had indeed been fired at Tel Aviv, to concede they had taken the army by surprise and to say that the authorities were “trying to understand” who was behind the attack. They were busy all night doing just that.