Late Saturday night, an Iranian missile loaded with explosives struck a large house in Tamra, a Palestinian city in northern Israel. Within seconds, the explosion reduced the modern home to a pile of rubble, killing four members of the Khatib family and wounding dozens of their neighbors. 

Raja Khatib, an attorney who lost his wife, Manar; daughters Shada, a 20-year-old university student, and Hala, aged 13; and sister-in-law, also Manar, in the blast, told +972 that he was not at home when the missile hit and rushed back as soon as the sirens stopped. 

“When I arrived, my youngest daughter, Razan, said that her mother and sisters were on the upper floor and hadn’t been able to reach her in the safe room [reinforced to serve as an at-home bomb shelter] in time, because the missile fell so quickly,” he recounted. “I tried to reach them, but I couldn’t: the house was destroyed, and I realized they couldn’t be saved.

“Just three days ago we came back from a vacation in Italy,” Khatib continued. “How I wish the flight had been delayed by a day and canceled. My wife was my whole world. She was a successful teacher, loved by her students. My brother’s wife was the same. Shada was an outstanding law student; she dreamed of becoming a lawyer like me and my brother, maybe even a judge. Hala didn’t even have time to dream — she was only 13. I wouldn’t wish this even on my worst enemy.”

The tragedy suffered by the Khatib family, who join some 20 other casualties of Iranian missiles in Israel since the Israeli army launched its attack on Iran last Friday morning, exposed once again the systemic inequality inherent in Israel’s civil defense infrastructure. According to a 2018 State Comptroller’s report, 60 out of 71 Arab municipalities in Israel have no public shelters. Tamra, a city of 37,000 residents, is one of them. For comparison, Safed, a Jewish city of similar size (about 42,000 residents), has 138 public shelters. Even Mitzpe Aviv, a nearby Jewish community with only 1,100 residents, has 13 public shelters. 

At-home safe rooms (which are known in Hebrew as a “Mamad”, and considered less effective at withstanding blasts than larger public shelters) are few and far between in Arab towns and cities. Under Israeli law, safe rooms cannot be built in houses that were constructed without the necessary permit. Yet many Palestinian families in Israel are forced to build without permits due to discriminatory housing policies that make it almost impossible to build legally in Arab municipalities.

The result, according to the State Comptroller’s report, is that 46 percent of Palestinian citizens of Israel have no access to adequate protection from aerial attacks, compared to 26 percent of the general population. 

Urban renewal projects, which require the building of safe rooms in new homes, could offer a partial solution — but according to the NGO Sikkuy-Aufoq, not a single urban renewal project was approved in an Arab town between 2010 and 2023, compared to more than 5,600 projects in Jewish communities. Thus, years of planning discrimination have turned into a direct threat to Palestinian lives in Israel.

To make matters worse, the government decided around a year ago to shut down an initiative established after October 7 to provide life-saving information and services to the Arab public in Israel during wartime. A collaboration between the Social Equality Ministry’s Authority for the Socioeconomic Development of Arab Society, the National Committee of Arab Mayors, and the Kafr Qassem Municipality, the initiative had received praise from the Home Front Command and was shown to be effective in research by civil society organizations, yet the government argued that there was no need to maintain a dedicated service for Palestinian citizens.

A young man from Tamra, who preferred not to be named, emphasized to +972 that Saturday’s tragedy was not the first and nor will it be the last. “A year ago, a woman was killed in nearby Shefa-‘Amr [when a rocket from Lebanon hit her home]. There are no public shelters like those in Jewish communities, and most houses are old without protected rooms. In Tamra, and in most Arab towns, the state delays the expansion of our communities, so there are fewer new neighborhoods and homes compared to Jewish towns, which are expanding almost daily.

“Beyond that, you don’t have to be a military expert to understand that the air defense systems are designed to protect the Jewish municipalities,” he went on. “Sometimes an Arab town gets lucky if it falls under the defense coverage of a nearby Jewish city, but that’s generally not the case. From Shefa-‘Amr last year, to Tamra, Majd Al-Krum, Tarshiha, and other incidents, it’s clear: the state that ignores our deaths from organized crime also ignores our deaths from other causes.”

Mazzen Ghanaim, head of the National Committee of Arab Mayors, placed blame directly on the shoulders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “If this is the ‘New Middle East’ — we don’t want it.”

‘We will not be silent’

In the aftermath of the Khatib deaths, one mainstream Israeli TV channel resorted to victim-blaming — emphasizing that those killed were not inside a safe room (in response, Tamra’s mayor, Musa Abu Rumi, hit back: “The house was new and fortified, but it couldn’t withstand a missile carrying nearly 400kg of explosives, according to what the Home Front Command told us. The entire neighborhood was damaged.”).

Soon after, a video went viral showing young Israeli Jews cheering at the sight of missiles falling in Tamra, singing the common far-right refrain: “May your village burn.” While Netanyahu condemned the video, his media ally Yinon Magal seemed to justify it when he stated: “Not everyone in Tamra loves Israel.” 

In response to complaints of racist incitement, including from Palestinian MK Ahmad Tibi, police announced that “the matter is under investigation,” but no arrests have been reported. In contrast, the previous day police arrested 17 youths from Umm Al-Fahem who had celebrated the first wave of Iranian missile attacks.

For the young man from Tamra, the double-standard is clear. “The story [of Jewish incitement against Palestinians] apparently isn’t even worth the police’s attention. And why would it be, when one of Israel’s senior journalists justifies the death of our daughters live on air? If the roles had been reversed, there’s no need to explain what would have happened.”

At the University of Haifa’s College of Law, students and faculty alike mourned the death of 20-year-old Shada Khatib. Attorney Abeer Baker, who was her teacher at the college, described Khatib as “a beloved, radiant, and promising student. One missile destroyed Shada’s dream and cut a thread from all of our souls. We will not be silent, and we will not stop fighting to bring to justice every filthy fascist who rejoiced over your death, over your family’s grief, and over our pain.” 

This effort to prosecute them, Baker emphasized, would be “part of Shada’s path, of the project she didn’t get to complete.” Indeed, she added, “Shada’s last wish was to volunteer with the Adalah Legal Center, and her last message to me was that she had sent her resume and hoped to become part of their team.

“Your name and voice will remain in my memory — and the memory of all of us — as a radiant symbol, a torch of wisdom that dreamed of becoming a voice against injustice, despite all the hardships.”

A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.