‘Not for you’: Israeli shelters exclude Palestinians as bombs rain down

Shelters are a lifeline in Israel from Iranian missile attacks, but Palestinian citizens of the country have been locked out.


When Iranian missiles began raining down on Israel, many residents scrambled for cover. Sirens wailed across the country as people rushed into bomb shelters.

But for some Palestinian citizens of Israel – two million people, or roughly 21 percent of the population – doors were slammed shut, not by the force of the blasts and not by enemies, but by neighbours and fellow citizens.


Mostly living in cities, towns, and villages within Israel’s internationally recognised borders, many Palestinian citizens of Israel found themselves excluded from life-saving infrastructure during the worst nights of the Iran-Israel conflict to date.

For Samar al-Rashed, a 29-year-old single mother living in a mostly Jewish apartment complex near Acre, the reality of that exclusion came on Friday night. Samar was at home with her five-year-old daughter, Jihan. As sirens pierced the air, warning of incoming missiles, she grabbed her daughter and rushed for the building’s shelter.

“I didn’t have time to pack anything,” she recalled. “Just water, our phones, and my daughter’s hand in mine.”

The panicking mother tried to ease her daughter’s fear, while hiding her own, gently encouraging her in soft-spoken Arabic to keep up with her rushed steps towards the shelter, as other neighbours climbed down the stairs, too.

But at the shelter door, she said, an Israeli resident, having heard her speak Arabic, blocked their entry – and shut it in their faces.

“I was stunned,” she said. “I speak Hebrew fluently. I tried to explain. But he looked at me with contempt and just said, ‘Not for you.’”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/17/not-for-you-israeli-shelters-exclude-palestinians-as-bombs-rain-down