Hi,
Looking on the current round of the war in the Gulf from far feel different.
You wake up in the morning (not in the middle of the night) in your bed (and not in the protected area or shelter) and send the kids to the summer activities in school without thinking if they will have enough space in school shelter (come to think about it – do they?).
You watch the gulf burn in mid-July. While the humidity here in the center is hovering somewhere around 90%, and the AC in my apartment is currently holding our sanity together by only a thread. Open the news site to find out we Iran had bombed Jordan, UAE and Kewait. While US had launched attacks on Iran this is the 5th day.
I’m sitting here dealing with fact that slowly getting into my consciousness, that we are not the main character of the Middle East’s current disaster (Some may argue about it – claiming we are always are. And now our proxies are fighting the war for us).
If you’ve been tracking the absolute chaos in the Persian Gulf over the last few weeks, you know the drill. Ships blocked in the Strait of Hormuz, US-Iran saber-rattling, drone strikes on petrochemical plants, and the Arab Gulf states sweating bullets while trying to broker a shaky ceasefire.
Normally, when things explode in this region, we are right in the center of the poster. But for once, we are watching this play out on the sidelines like spectators at a very expensive, very dangerous sport we didn’t buy tickets for.
Honestly? It’s weird. It’s like watching your neighbors have a screaming match on the lawn—you want to look away, but you also want to make sure none of their thrown lawn chairs land on your car (or ballistic missile in our case… 
).
And we might get several of those Iranian strikes, just like happened in June 8th. When Iran had launched several ballistic missiles about a month ago, mainly to north of Israel in response to Israel attack in Beirut.
For a day, we all thought this will be the third round of war with Iran (after Am Kelavi and She’agat HaAri). The schools were canceled, and we were about to get used to sleep in the protected area again. Lucky for us it ended as fast as it started.
But who knows, we might get another day of war or a full round soon. In the meanwhile – we try to figure out away to deal with the kids in this heat. While hoping the next buzz from the phone is not home front command cell broadcast massage.
Take Care
Gad
Hula Valley on sunrise (on the left you can see the Hasbani valley) when we are far from the war
Manara on the morning fogs