‘They just see you as an Arab’: Israel’s Palestinian citizens given cursory protection from attack. Deaths of four family members sheltering in supposed ‘safe rooms’ in Tamra highlight racial inequality of Israel’s defence of its citizens

Ruins of the Khatib family home in which Manar Khatib, her two daughter and sister-in-law all died in two ‘safe rooms’ in the blast from an Iranian missile. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

...  The war between Israel and Iran involves powerful modern weapons that can turn a human body into vapour and scraps in an instant. Israel also has modern air defences which have managed thus far to intercept most of the incoming Iranian missiles. And for three-quarters of the country there are underground bunkers, a virtual guarantee of survival.

But the Khatib family did not have a bunker. They were Palestinian citizens of Israel, like the rest of the 37,000 population of this old hillside town in the Lower Galilee. And in common with most Palestinian-majority towns, Tamra does not have a single underground shelter. Like much else in Israel, there is nothing equal about the way death comes from the sky.

“The Israeli government, since the creation of the state, didn’t invest in one public shelter for the Arab part of society,” Tamra’s mayor, Mussa Abu Rumi, said. The reinforced “safe rooms” in new-build houses are an inferior alternative, as the fate of the Khatibs showed, and Abu Rumi said only 40% of Tamra residents even have those... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/15/they-just-see-you-as-an-arab-israels-palestinian-citizens-given-cursory-protection-from-attack

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