A deadly explosion hit Tel Aviv's oceanfront before dawn

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Much of Israel's commercial capital, Tel Aviv, has returned more or less to business as usual. The heavy rocket fire the city faced last fall in the early days of the Gaza war ended months ago. But the sense of normality was shattered in a deadly pre-dawn explosion Friday that rocked Tel Aviv's oceanfront. For details, NPR's Greg Myre joins us from Tel Aviv. Hey, Greg.

GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.

DETROW: What can you tell us about this attack?

MYRE: So the Tel Aviv beachfront is one of the liveliest places in the country. People stay on the beach until late at night, playing volleyball under the lights. The restaurants are hopping. It's just a place full of vitality. Now, it had quieted down by 3:00 a.m., when a large drone came in from over the Mediterranean and slammed into an apartment building just a block off the beach. Jonathan Karten and some friends were up late and on the apartment balcony at the time of the attack.

JONATHAN KARTEN: A friend of mine said, cool, what's that? What's that over there? I turned my head to see. And then I heard a buzzing, like an F-35, but it was only maybe 30 meters above sea level. So it was strange. And then I saw a red and orange blast. I felt this heat blow back.

MYRE: So Karten and his friends are okay, but a 50-year-old man was killed, and several other people were injured in a blast that caused substantial damage and just shattered windows for several blocks all around. Also, this was just a block from the U.S. Embassy branch office, which is on the seafront.

DETROW: Who's claiming responsibility for this?

MYRE: So the Houthi militia in Yemen. And Yemen is a long way away, hundreds of miles. The Houthis said this was a new type of drone, quote, "capable of bypassing the enemy's interception systems and undetectable by radars." And they said the operation achieved its goals. Now, the Houthis, as we know, have mostly targeted commercial ships in the Red Sea in recent months, and they say that's in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. They have also fired on southern Israel, but those attacks were batted away without too much difficulty by Israel and U.S. naval forces. So before today, the direct Houthi threat to Israel seemed more symbolic than serious.

DETROW: Right. Right. And even if this is a new technology, as they're claiming, Israel and its allies have been so effective at knocking down drones and rockets. How did this manage to hit a city like Tel Aviv?

MYRE: Yeah, Scott, that's a very important point. The Israeli military said the air defense detection system had not been turned on. And this was described as, quote, "human air." And so this is still under investigation. But what we can say is that Israel has dealt with thousands of Hamas rockets coming from the south out of Gaza since last fall. And Israel is still dealing with Hezbollah rockets that are raining down daily in the north, from Lebanon. But until today, Tel Aviv really hadn't faced an aerial attack coming in from the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and this apparently caught Israel off guard.

DETROW: Yeah. Greg, one other topic. The International Court of Justice at the Hague issued a ruling today on the legality of Israel's settlements. What did the court say?

MYRE: They said that the Israeli presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem violates international law, and that Israel must pull out and pay reparations. So the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, who's based in the West Bank, called it a historic decision. And according to the court, this would mean that more than 700,000 Israelis would have to pick up and leave areas that Israel captured in the 1967 war.

But, Scott, in reality, none of this is going to happen. This is an advisory, non-binding opinion by the court. The United Nations has been saying the same thing, essentially, about Israeli settlements for decades, and yet they just keep growing and are, in fact, expanding quite rapidly right now. In fact, more than 10% of Israel's Jewish population now lives in the West Bank in East Jerusalem and which the Palestinians want as part of a future state. Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made clear Israel won't be pulling back. He said in a statement, quote, "the Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land."

DETROW: That's NPR's Greg Myre in Tel Aviv. Greg, thanks so much.

MYRE: Sure thing, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.