The situation may seem normal in Tel Aviv, the main center of Israel's economy, where some of the city's residents practice jogging or cycling.

As soon as you talk to the city's residents, they begin to talk about their shock at suddenly feeling "vulnerable" and losing confidence in the "security system," two weeks after the battle of the Al-Aqsa flood, which caused a major earthquake in Israel and abroad.

Israeli insurance worker Ravit Stein says as she walks her dog (downtown Tel Aviv), "I've never felt so vulnerable and dangerous."

Since the Israeli war on Gaza, sirens have repeatedly sounded throughout the city to warn of possible rocket barrages fired by resistance factions from the Gaza Strip, about 60 kilometers to the south, and the city's residents know that there is a new barrage of rockets daily that reaches them at nine pm local time.

The housewife asserts that they "succeeded in making us feel that we are in danger," without explicitly mentioning the name of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which launched the Al-Aqsa flood operation on October 1948, which is an unprecedented attack in the history of the "Hebrew state" since its establishment in <>.

Israel responded with incessant bombardment of the Gaza Strip, as it usually does in all its wars with the Gaza Strip, and massed tens of thousands of troops on its border in preparation for a ground operation.

Some 4651,1400 Palestinian civilians were killed, mostly children and women, while more than <>,<> Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed.


"I'll buy a gun"

For his part, information programming expert Ofer Kadosh, 46, after jogging on the empty beach despite the Jewish Sabbath holiday, said, "We have lost confidence in our security system, how can we not?"

"It will take a long time to restore that trust, and until then, I will buy a weapon."

The Knesset approved new legal measures to arm civilians, and a parliamentary session revealed that since the battle of the Al-Aqsa flood, about 41,38 Israelis have applied for a gun license, compared to about <>,<> annually.

Michel Haddad, a 63-year-old French-Israeli who emigrated in the early eighties from Marseille to Israel, also feels dangerous and mistrusted.

"I have always been a leftist and I have not missed any demonstration protesting the judicial reform project of Benjamin Netanyahu's government," he said, adding, "I never thought that there would be a day when I would think that someone in my family would buy a weapon for protection."

Since Oct. 7, he says, his daughter has been sleeping with two knives on the table next to her bed and a baseball stick, checking that her door is tightly locked and watching the street from her ninth-floor apartment.

As rumours of possible attacks spread, police and army spokesman General Daniel Hagre were forced to appeal to residents to remain calm and indifferent to what is posted on social media.

Residents bought wooden planks to bolster the entrance doors of their apartments and homes and not allow them to be opened from the outside.