Reporter's Notebook: At the scene of the Tel Aviv drone attack

The corner of Shalom Aleichem and Ben-Yehuda Streets was crowded with onlookers on Friday, July 19. They had come to see the aftermath of a drone attack on Tel Aviv overnight. The drone had exploded and killed one person and injured ten just after three in the morning.

Six hours later, most of the debris from the attack was cleared away. Police, a fire truck, and an ambulance remained nearby, and part of the street was closed. However, most of life was continuing as normal on this quiet Friday.

Tel Aviv is usually quiet on Friday mornings. The snarls of traffic that usually make the city impossible to navigate are reduced. Many streets are taken over by people on stand-up scooters and others out for a jog, or heading back and forth to breakfast, or yoga.

Ben-Yehuda Street next to the impact site is a chaos of traffic changes and construction, so the once-bustling street is often now a ghost town. On the corner, across from where the drone hit, there is an Aroma Café, and several of its windows are cobwebbed with shattered glass.

On three sides of the street are small mini-markets. There is a Thai massage place, a laundromat, and a few small hotels. Overall, the damage to the street, cars and buildings did not appear outwardly great. Broken glass and shrapnel had rained down. Several officials came to inspect the damage and file paperwork. A man cleaned his motorbike from the falling glass and dust.

Tel Aviv has been in the crosshairs before

The site of the drone impact is within a few minutes’ walk of the US Embassy branch office on Hayarkon Street. This shows how close this impact came, not just to the US diplomatic outpost, but also the line of hotels along Hayarkon. It just so happens to be that the impacted area is primarily a number of construction sites.

Tel Aviv has been in the crosshairs before. It has been targeted by Hamas, and it was targeted in years past by Saddam Hussein and also during Israel’s War of Independence.

The Egyptians bombed Tel Aviv in May of 1948. During the War of Independence, soldiers who came back from the front would remark on how Tel Aviv went about its daily life of cafés and beach culture. Today, one could say the same amid the Houthi threat.

While people gathered to see the site of the impact, they then went on their way. On Bograshov Street, a few minutes away from the site of the drone attack, people enjoyed their Friday breakfast. Some had coffee, others a sandwich. A group of older men, who probably meet like this every Friday, sat and discussed the day’s events.

The only distraction to the quiet morning now came from a helicopter hovering overhead that was surveying the damage. People looked up at this annoyance, and one made remarks about the government’s leaders coming to “see from the air.”

Down the street were posters of the hostages held in Gaza, a common sight in Tel Aviv – a reminder of the ongoing war of which the drone attack is now the latest part.