A sense of relief and confusion, overpowered by overwhelming emptiness and sadness.
Those were the swirling emotions that emerged from the frenetic Tuesday morning events that occurred even as the birds were still yawning.
Being woken up at 5 a.m. to a series of alerts of impending missiles from Iran, and reading that US President Donald Trump had announced that a ceasefire was taking place, was the confusing part.
Maybe nobody told the ayatollahs, we surmised, sleepily heading to the bomb shelters for the umpteenth time over the last 12 days.
Ceasefires, at least in the Middle East, mean trying to get the last shot in. And in this case, it was a deadly one – the worst of the war – in Beersheba.
We felt relief because it appears we can now wash the bomb shelters’ floors, stack the chairs, and return to the mixed and muddy reality before June 12.
The skies will open, the Israelis stuck abroad will return, the cafés will be back in business, and the protests calling for a deal in Gaza to return the hostages will resume.
Emptiness is the feeling that came with the sense that, despite Israel’s notable accomplishments over the last 12 days in cutting the head off the Iranian monster, there is no victory.
War today never ends in victory for one side and surrender for the other.
The Allied forces and Nazi Germany did not agree to a ceasefire and then lick their wounds and regroup; both were still entrenched in their respective ideologies.
Israel obviously owes a debt to Trump for enabling the war to end so quickly with the US bombing of the Iranian nuclear reactors. But his pandering to the regime as if they were members in good standing of the international community is misguided at best.
Reading Trump’s statement on the ceasefire, punctuated with “God bless Iran” as rescue workers were pulling bodies out of the Beersheba rubble, was a grotesque juxtaposition of wishful thinking and stark reality.
Instead of coddling, Iran needs to be treated like the outlier that it is, and made to pay for the carnage it strew over Israel – not as a potential partner for peace.
The other sense – sadness – emerged in that everything seems to have changed in the last 12 days, but really, has anything?
Over for now
The current warfare might be over for now. But even though the Iranian regime may not have the capabilities for a while to do anything about it, they still want me and my family, and all Israelis, dead.
Still deadly, the ayatollahs are still in power. The heartbreaking scenes in Beersheba are the ones that many in Israel and in Iran will remember, as Operation Rising Lion saunters away – not with a roar, but with a whimper.
N12 analysts Nir Dvori and Giora Eiland differed on how Israel should react. The usually right-leaning Eiland said that Israel should honor the ceasefire despite the carnage in Beersheba, because it had nothing to gain by prolonging the war.
Military correspondent Dvori differed, saying that post-October 7, Israel could not afford to let an enemy get the last word and needs to emphatically retaliate, ceasefire or not.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in deep debt to Trump, and evidently paying attention to the president’s later announcement warning the two sides, “Do not violate it [the ceasefire],” initially put the issue to rest three hours after the Beersheba attack, saying that Israel would honor the ceasefire.
“Israel has removed an immediate existential threat on two fronts – both in the nuclear domain and in the field of ballistic missiles,” his statement said.
Of course, it didn’t play out exactly as Trump would want, and he turned his wrath on Israel, knowing that it’s better to bully those who won’t attack you back rather than Iran, which would have no qualms about going after American interests again, like it did on Monday.
So, this chapter of the Israeli-Arab conflict will eventually end, with Iran’s violation of the ceasefire soon after it began, and Israel’s vow to retaliate, likely just the death rattle of a spent conflict.
When it does end, today, tomorrow, or the next day, we’ll mourn our dead, rebuild the destroyed homes, and hope that the next chapter can be delayed or even ripped out by the binding.
But the story – and the war – is far from over.
The pressure on Netanyahu (from within Israel and from Trump) to reach a deal in Gaza will mount, with the logic being that the Iranian regime, our mortal enemy, is still intact, albeit severely weakened.
The same can be said for Hamas in Gaza, meaning that the time is ripe, and urgent, to reach an agreement to withdraw from the enclave for the return of all 50 remaining hostages, alive and dead.
Besides turning back Iran’s nuclear program and making the world safer, this could be the crowning legacy of the Israel-Iran war, and it would help make sense of Tuesday’s senseless deaths in Beersheba.