‘The war is over and who paid the price?': The families who lost everything in Netanyahu's 12-day war

Sydney Morning Herald

2 days ago

Raja Khatib can't stop thinking about the way things were before the missile fell from the sky. His seemingly charmed life with his wife and three daughters in the lavish family home he called their palazzo. Their holiday home in Italy, funded by his thriving career as a successful, respected lawyer. 'It felt like I had the best life,' he says. 'I had everything.' Slumped in a brown chair in his elderly parents' living room, he takes a deep breath as he prepares to tell his story. Soon, a tear begins streaming down his cheek.
The Khatib family had just returned from a holiday in Italy when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorised a series of surprise attacks on key military and nuclear facilities in Iran a fortnight ago, triggering a war between the Middle East's dominant military powers. On the second day of the war, Iran fired a ballistic missile at Haifa, Israel's third-largest city and the home of the country's most important naval base. Israel's famed Iron Dome air defence system intercepted the missile, protecting the residents of Haifa. Instead of its target destination, the missile landed on top of the Khatibs' home in Tamra, 25 kilometres away.
The three-storey structure was made of thick stone and concrete, had two safe rooms, yet proved no match for the bomb. As he discovered to his horror as he searched through the rubble in the black of night, Khatib's wife Manar died in the attack. So did two of the couple's three daughters – Shada, a university student, and 13-year-old Hala. His sister-in-law, who lived in the building with his brother, died as well.
'My palace is gone and I don't care,' he says. 'I don't want to see the house. I will never want to live there again. If God gives me strength, I will live somewhere else.' He is tormented by the thought that if his family had remained in Italy just one day longer, the outbreak of the war would have prevented them from flying home. Some days he wishes he too died in the attack, so he could avoid the pain of living without his wife and daughters. They are buried, side by side, in a cemetery next to his parents' home.
Like almost all the 37,000 residents of Tamra, Khatib is a Muslim and an Arab citizen of Israel. Around 20 per cent of Israel's population – around 2 million people – are Arab, with many preferring to be known as Palestinian citizens of Israel, reflecting the fact they are descendants of those who remained after the creation of the Jewish state. Although technically enjoying the same legal and voting rights, Arab citizens of Israel often face entrenched segregation, economic inequality and discrimination.
Adding to Khatib's grief is that some of his fellow citizens cheered on the attack that killed his wife and daughters. In a video that has been widely shared and condemned in Israel, people speaking Hebrew can be heard celebrating as they watch rockets landing on Tamra while singing a hateful anti-Arab song, May your village burn. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who visited Tamra after the attack and met with Khatib, condemned the video as 'appalling and disgraceful'. Netanyahu said he 'vehemently' rejected such rejoicing. 'The missile makes no distinction,' he said. 'It harms Jews as well as Arabs. They're coming to destroy all of us, and we stand in this battle together.'
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While most Israelis would indeed recoil at the video, there is no denying the political divisions between the nation's Jewish majority and Arab minority – including on the war with Iran. A survey by the Israel Democracy Institute taken during the war found that 82 per cent of Jewish Israelis supported the strikes on Iran, while 65 per cent of Arab Israelis opposed the attacks and were suspicious of their timing. Khatib believes Netanyahu launched the strikes for self-interested political reasons, to distract from political scandals and anger over his handling of the war in Gaza.
As a ceasefire agreement took hold this week after 12 days of fighting, Netanyahu hailed Israel's operation in Iran as a 'historic victory' that would be 'studied by armies all over the world'. Khatib, however, does not believe any military gains are worth the pain he is suffering. 'The war is over, and who paid the price? I did, and other families like mine.'
We encounter a different message altogether at Bat Yam, a city near Tel Aviv that is a stronghold of Netanyahu's conservative Likud party. Just hours after Khatib's home in Tamra was hit, an Iranian missile cratered into a 10-storey apartment building, killing nine people. The town's mayor has described the blast as the most devastating missile attack in Israel's history. Many of the surrounding apartments were destroyed and rendered unlivable, including the home of car salesman Ronen Sha'a Shua and partner Ivanka.
Since the attack two weeks ago, they have come to their apartment to see if they can enter to salvage any belongings, but it is still too dangerous to do so. Mangled air-conditioning units dangle from buildings like oversized Christmas ornaments, with electricity wires and steel beams spilling out everywhere.
Rather than being disillusioned by the attack, the couple say they feel galvanised and more patriotic than ever. 'I'm not even mad about this because I support the war,' says Ronen, who is Jewish, as he gazes up at his bombed-out apartment. 'It was a justified war and we did an incredible job.' Before the war, they were considering moving to Ivanka's birth country of Bulgaria for a quieter life. 'This has made up our minds: now Israel is No.1. We saw what we are up against.'
Asked his thoughts on Netanyahu, he uses the prime minister's nickname: 'I love you, Bibi.' Asked why, he says: 'It's simple: you feel security with him. There's no better alternative. With him, it feels like we have a security guard, someone you can believe in.' While he says Netanyahu is partly to blame for the failures that led to the October 7 attacks, he says the Israeli military and intelligence services also share responsibility.
First elected in 1996, Netanyahu has been in office for most of the past 30 years, making him the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history. For almost all that time he has said that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an existential threat to Israel, and has urged successive US presidents to attack Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities. All said no, until Donald Trump on Sunday agreed to unleash bunker-busting bombs on Iran's three main nuclear facilities.
The impact of the strikes remains contested. While Trump insists Iran's nuclear facilities have been 'obliterated', a leaked assessment by the US Defence Intelligence Agency concluded they probably only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a few months and that much of the nation's stockpile of highly enriched uranium may have been moved before the strikes. The long-term consequences of the war also remain unclear, with some analysts arguing it will ultimately drive the Iranians to develop nuclear weapons.
Such arguments currently have little traction in Israel, where Operation Rising Lion (as the campaign against Iran was officially called) has been hailed as a strategic triumph. Electronic billboards beside major highways in Israel are displaying messages of thanks to Trump for intervening in the conflict, and Netanyahu is basking in praise for weakening Israel's biggest strategic adversary.
'Israel may have removed the most multi-sided octopus of threats it has ever faced – and in one fell swoop, and put every adversary in the region on notice that it will no longer play nice,' ran a typical analysis in The Jerusalem Post. Following the ceasefire agreement this week, veteran US Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller summed up the situation by telling The New York Times: 'The most ruthless, politically savvy politician in Israel today sits astride Israeli politics and the US-Israeli politics, for now, like some sort of colossus … Netanyahu comes out of this, for now, extraordinarily powerful.'
Even in Tel Aviv – a famously progressive bastion where Netanyahu is widely loathed – we find grudging respect for his decision to strike Iran and success at convincing Trump to enter the conflict.
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Walking along the beach promenade as the sun sets over the horizon, aged care worker Ifat Shani says: 'I've been against him all the time, but he did the right thing now. It will be good for all of the Middle East if Iran cannot get a nuclear bomb; they do not want Israel to exist here.' Like most other Israelis she regards the Iranian regime as a uniquely menacing threat given its support for proxy groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and its stated vow to wipe Israel off the map.
Sitting with a group of friends nearby watching the sunset, 27-year-old French-Israeli Alexia Maarek says she is no fan of Netanyahu's domestic policies or his far-right governing coalition. But she applauded his decision to take on Iran. 'The war with Iran was not negotiable,' she insists.
As she throws a ball around with her granddaughter in Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Square, Monica Levi says: 'Before I thought we needed someone else, but now I think he is clever.'
Similarly, all of Netanyahu's main political foes backed his strategy on Iran. 'Benjamin Netanyahu is a bitter political rival,' said the centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid. 'I think he's the wrong person to lead the country. But on that, he was right.' Naftali Bennett, Netanyahu's chief conservative opponent, praised the government for working to remove the 'cancerous growth' of Iran's nuclear program.
In a rare public statement, the head of the Mossad spy agency, David Barnea, said: 'Israel, thanks to this entire security apparatus, today feels like a different country, a safer country, a braver country that is prepared for the future … Objectives that once seemed imaginary have now been achieved.'
As with last year's stunning pager attacks against Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon and the killing of militant leader Hassan Nasrallah, the operation against Iran has led to a boost in Netanyahu's popularity. A poll taken this week by the Walla newspaper found Netanyahu's Likud party gaining ground in the polls, and would pick up an extra four seats in the Israeli parliament, although not enough to form a coalition government. One-third of Israelis said their view of Netanyahu had improved, compared with 8 per cent who said they viewed him more negatively, and 54 per cent whose view was unchanged.
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Netanyahu's critics are growing increasingly concerned by a prospect that seemed unthinkable after the failures of October 7. 'The biggest danger facing us all – Israelis and Palestinians – is that after the war in Iran, Prime Minister Netanyahu might be, once again, electable,' Gershon Baskin, a fierce critic of Netanyahu and veteran hostage release negotiator, wrote on Substack this week.
The complex relationship between Netanyahu and Trump frayed on Tuesday, when Trump publicly demanded Israel not retaliate against Iran for a missile strike that killed four people in the southern city of Beersheba. 'We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f--- they're doing,' Trump fumed.
Two days later, the bromance was back on as Trump hailed Netanyahu as a 'great hero' on social media and called for all criminal charges against him to be dropped. Netanyahu is facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, including allegations he traded favours with media proprietors for positive coverage. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial, which began in 2020, continues to proceed at a glacial pace.
'After the war, he should quit on a high note like a king,' taxi driver Mordehai Rahamim says of Netanyahu. 'He's been around too long. There is too much drama around one person.' But with the Israeli political left in disarray, he believes Netanyahu will win re-election next year.
Tamar Hermann, one of Israel's top experts on public opinion, cautions not to overestimate the impact of the 12-day war on Netanyahu's popularity. 'It has changed little if anything,' the senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute says. Rejecting fevered speculation that Netanyahu could call snap elections to capitalise on his success, she notes that the euphoria of military triumph can quickly fade as life returns to normal. 'Less than half the Israeli public has full or partial trust in Netanyahu,' she says. Still, she believes Netanyahu has a real shot at re-election next year.
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The end of the war with Iran will see the focus again return to Gaza, and the plight of the remaining 50 Israeli hostages held by Hamas, around half of whom are believed to be alive. Indeed, celebrations at the ceasefire with Iran were muted by the news on the same day that seven Israeli soldiers had been killed in Gaza. Speaking to Israelis of all political persuasions over the past week, we found an overwhelming desire to secure a hostage release deal and pervasive fatigue with the war. 'Finish it, it's enough,' Netanyahu supporter Ronen Sha'a Shua says. 'We can't move on until our hostages come back.'
The pro-Netanyahu Israeli Hayom newspaper reported that Trump and Netanyahu have agreed to end the war in Gaza within two weeks, and that a coalition of four Arab countries will govern the strip. While these reports have not been confirmed, it is widely believed that Trump's decision to intervene against Iran was somehow linked to an agreement to wrap up the war in Gaza and pursue new peace agreements with Israel's neighbours. 'We think we will have some pretty big announcements on countries that are coming into the Abraham Accords,' Trump adviser Steve Witkoff said this week, referring to the agreements that saw Israel normalise relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco in Trump's first term.
Raja Khatib, whose wife and two daughters died in the Iranian missile attack, urges Netanyahu, a lifelong opponent of a Palestinian state, to go even further. 'I hope the wars will end and that there will be a just peace, that there will be two states: Palestinian and Jewish living side by side,' he says. 'Otherwise, the Middle East will burn and there will be more wars.'
At times, when he sits in silence, he hears the voice of his late wife telling him to keep living for the sake of their middle daughter, Rozan, 16, who made it to the family safe room and survived the missile attack. 'I have to build a new house, build a new life,' he says, 'but the pain will be forever.'