When Hadas Tal, 38, was given just 10 minutes by first responders to return to her shattered apartment in Holon and take whatever essentials she could after an Iranian missile’s shrapnel struck the building on Thursday, her mind snapped into survival mode.

“My husband was in shock, but I knew I had to stay practical,” said Tal, a mother of three girls aged 5, 8 and 11. “It felt like a reality show challenge — 10 minutes to complete a task. Everything was broken, covered in glass, but I managed to grab clothes, shoes and my daughters’ dolls.”

Tal spoke with The Times of Israel at the Leonardo Jerusalem Hotel by the Fattal group. The hotel is currently accommodating some 800 evacuees from the city in central Israel after a missile hit a block of apartment buildings, leaving four people seriously injured.

The confrontation between Israel and Iran began on June 13, when Israel pre-emptively struck multiple targets in Iran to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, after intelligence suggested that Tehran, which avowedly seeks Israel’s destruction, was getting close to its goal.

Before a fragile ceasefire was reached on Tuesday, Iran launched some 550 ballistic missiles and around 1,000 drones at the Jewish state in retaliation. Iran’s missile attacks killed 28 people and wounded thousands in Israel, according to health officials and hospitals.

As of Monday, 11,000 people had been evacuated to hotels nationwide, according to the Federation of Local Authorities, with an additional 4,000 estimated to have moved in with friends and relatives.

“For now, my girls are euphoric because they feel this is some sort of vacation,” Tal said. “They have a lot of friends here, and they run around with them, but whenever they want to go home, we will have a problem.”

Tal said that she is purposefully keeping herself busy all the time, first and foremost by taking care of her daughters, but also by helping out as much as she can.

“I am handing out ice cream to children, sorting through donations and more,” she said. “I feel my brain cannot deal with anything that is not practical life.”

With tourists gone, schools still closed, the nearby Old City sealed off to non-residents, and all non-essential businesses shuttered, the streets around the hotel were quiet in the sweltering Jerusalem heat on Monday when The Times of Israel visited.

But just outside the hotel entrance, the mood shifted. People clustered together — smoking, chatting on their phones, or simply taking a quiet moment.

Among them was Reut Haggiag, 39.

“There were sirens, we went down to the shelter of our building with the children, we closed the door, and then we heard a crazy boom,” she said, recalling the moment of the hit. “Everyone screamed, and when we opened the door, we understood there was an impact nearby, not in our building but in the building next to ours. There was glass and destruction everywhere.”

Immediately after, the family was evacuated to the hotel.

Haggiag noted that many had stepped up to help.

“The Israeli people are very special,” she said. “Many volunteers have been coming, especially from religious communities. There have been many girls from [the religious youth movement] Bnei Akiva and from the ultra-Orthodox community who have come to play with the kids. Others brought us candles to light for Shabbat. There have been many private initiatives to bring us all sorts of things.”

“Still, this is not home,” she added, a tired look on her face.

Asked about her children, 8 and 11, Haggiag said things are not easy for them.

“They do not fully understand the situation; they are frightened,” she said. “They are sad that all their things are broken. They want to know what will happen with our house and when we are going back.”

“They are asking many questions that we do not have answers for,” she said.

Haggiag, like everyone else who spoke with The Times of Israel, did not know how much time it would take to return home.

Inside the hotel, children seemed to be everywhere.

At a table in the lobby café, a group of elementary school children were deep into a game that involved mimicking animal sounds — chatting and laughing between bursts of roars and quacks.

In the middle of the hall, a toddler no older than two quietly colored with crayons, seemingly unfazed by the bustle around her.

Many of the children — and quite a few adults — clutched long, animal-shaped balloons, gifts from one of the many volunteers who had come to lift the spirits of the displaced families.

The Leonardo Hotel already hosted hundreds of evacuees in the aftermath of the Hamas onslaught on October 7, 2023, when thousands of terrorists infiltrated southern Israel, killing close to 1,200 people and destroying entire communities.

At the peak of the war, over 140,000 Israelis were displaced from their homes, not only from the south but also from the north of the country, after Iranian proxy Hezbollah also began firing rockets at Israel on October 8, 2023.

The evacuees hosted then at Leonardo came from Sderot in the south and Kiryat Shmona in the north and remained there between six and 12 months.

The war with Iran also reactivated a network of city volunteers originally formed in the wake of the October 7 attacks — the Jerusalem Civilian Volunteer Hub. The initiative is a joint effort by several organizations, including One Heart, Habayit Hameshutaf (Common Home) and Hitorerut, a liberal Zionist movement that also holds seats on the municipal council.

“During the first year of the war, we had up to 5,000 volunteers and 20 different departments, including housing, children, and legal aid,” said Rachael Risby Raz, who has been volunteering with the hub since the beginning.

“When the war with Iran started, we immediately began to operate again,” she told The Times of Israel over the phone, shortly after visiting the Leonardo Hotel with a donor bringing toys and art supplies for the children.

As of Monday, she explained that some 500 volunteers were working on different projects around the city, including cleaning public bomb shelters and collecting donations for the evacuees.

“I think part of the work is really just to be a listening ear to these people who have lost everything,” Risby Raz said.

Alongside the volunteers, dozens of Holon municipal workers in bright yellow vests were stationed throughout the hotel, setting up information tables to explain residents’ legal and financial rights and answer their questions.

“I’ve already taken care of filing a compensation claim,” said Amin Abdelhadi, 27.

He and his girlfriend lived on the top floor of one of the buildings severely damaged by the Iranian attack.

“All the glasses burst, all the door frames fell out,” Abdelhadi said. “Yet, at least our apartment is still standing. There are people from our street whose houses were completely destroyed.”

The couple had been preparing for the eventuality of an evacuation.

“We both had a bag with essential things ready,” Abdelhadi said.

He explained that heading to the shelter wasn’t simple — their dog had recently given birth to three puppies, so they had to plan carefully to bring everyone to safety.

“We could not bring the dogs to the hotel, unfortunately, so I took them to my parents, who live up north,” he said.

Abdelhadi said that it was hard for him not to be able to work.

“I am a cook in a restaurant, but it is too far from here,” he noted.

The hotel also provides evacuees with breakfast, lunch and dinner.

As this reporter visited, lunch was in full swing, with people of all ages enjoying the buffet of salads, vegetables, meat dishes and more.

Nassim Aharoni, 79, was sitting at a table by himself.

His apartment was also damaged in the attack, and both his and his partner’s cars were completely destroyed. Despite the ordeal he went through, he said he was optimistic, especially after the US joined Israel’s military efforts to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

“This is not home, but it’s OK,” Aharoni told The Times of Israel. “We love Israel, we love the country, we love the government, we love IDF soldiers, and the public,” he said. “We do not have another place. This is our country.”

Aharoni said that amid the region’s recent turmoil, he held hope that one day he would be able to visit his birthplace — Baghdad.

“I immigrated to Israel from Iraq at the beginning of the 1950s, and all my life, I have been wanting to visit the land where I was born,” he said. “Now I hope that I will be lucky enough to see a peace agreement with Iraq in the near future.”

Sue Surkes contributed to this report.