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I’m seeing a lot of photos on social media of Israelis in Tel Aviv and it’s suburbs hiding in bomb shelters during Gaza rocket launches, which seemingly implies a relatively high chance of their house getting hit by a rocket. Given the opportunity costs of running into a bomb shelter I imagine such odds should be at least 1 in a 1000.

Are there any official or unofficial estimates of what the chance is for a rocket to hit any given building in Tel Aviv within a given year? Or in other words, what percent of buildings got hit by a rocket in the past years?

JonathanReez
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    "which seemingly implies a relatively high chance of their house getting hit by a rocket": the chance is low; the consequences are severe. Would you stay in your house during s rocket attack if you knew that the chance of being killed or injured was one in a million? – phoog Nov 18 '23 at 05:48
  • @phoog I routinely drive a car which has a much larger risk of major injury, so yeah, I would? – JonathanReez Nov 18 '23 at 06:53

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I’m seeing a lot of photos on social media of Israelis in Tel Aviv and it’s suburbs hiding in bomb shelters during Gaza rocket launches, which seemingly implies a relatively high chance of their house getting hit by a rocket.

This is not what it implies. Since 1951, it's been part of Israeli law that "all homes, residential buildings and industrial buildings in Israel are required to have bomb shelters." (quote from Wikipedia).

Also, prior to 2011, when Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system was put in place, that now intercepts roughly 90% of incoming missiles targeted at Israel, the risk was much higher, and the lion's share of buildings in Tel Aviv were built prior to 2011.

While it is hard to pin down (e.g. the number of rocket attacks varies widely from year to year, the range of the rockets has varied over time, and the effectiveness of the Iron Dome has improved over time), we can look at some facts to provide an order of magnitude estimate.

The population of Tel Aviv is about 436,000, which is about 5% of the population is Israel proper excluding the West Bank and Gaza, and an estimate of the impact of a major earthquake's impact estimated that more than 330,000 buildings in Israel would suffer serious damage in an earthquake. It wouldn't be grossly off base to estimate that there are 20,000-50,000 buildings in Tel Aviv (fairly low since lots of housing in Tel Aviv is in the form of apartments with an average of 30 people or so per apartment building, and its office space is fairly high density as well).

According to Wikipedia:

Attacks began in 2001. Since then (August 2014 data), almost 20,000 rockets have hit southern Israel, all but a few thousand of them since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. Hamas justified these as counter-attacks to the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The rockets have killed 28 people and injured hundreds more. The range of the rockets has increased over time. The original Qassam rocket has a range of about 10 km (6.2 mi) but more advanced rockets, including versions of the old Soviet Grad or Katyusha have hit Israeli targets 40 km (25 mi) from Gaza.

Some rocket attacks damage buildings without causing death or injury to anyone. But, of course, the list above doesn't localize precisely where those rockets hit to an area as specific as Tel Aviv. One can look at the map to help gauge this fact as well:

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Tel Aviv is about 70 km from the Gaza Strip, which is beyond the range of the vast majority of missiles and rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, and today, about 90% of income missiles and rockets are intercepted before reaching their targets. The distance from the Lebanese border from which Hezbollah frequently shoots missiles at Israel to Tel Aviv is roughly 110-120 km (crudely measuring the distance as the crow flies from the map).

So, a rough order of magnitude estimate would be that less than one in 10,000 buildings in Tel Aviv are likely to be struck by missiles or rockets in any given year. Few buildings were hit there in past years, because the lion's share of missiles and rockets launched towards Israel have lacked the range to hit Tel Aviv.

But, since the longest range missiles and rockets that exist in the international arms markets that could include Tel Aviv is non-zero, and the possibility of longer range missiles has grown in recent years (some were fired from Yemen but intercepted before striking Israeli targets in the past month) the risk in Tel Aviv is probably higher now than it has been in most of the last quarter-century.

The example of long range missile attacks from Russia to the deep interior of Ukraine illustrates the potential risk with current military technologies. Given that Iran and Syria both have military ties to Russia, and that some missiles of that type have been fired at Israel from Yemen, the prospect of those kinds of missiles being used against Israel and reaching Tel Aviv is far more than speculative.

ohwilleke
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  • less than one in 10,000 buildings in Tel Aviv are likely to be struck by missiles or rockets in any given year => thanks. Then I'm extremely confused as to why people in Tel Aviv bother going to a shelter. Seems like driving is way more dangerous. – JonathanReez Nov 17 '23 at 22:58
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    @JonathanReez The risk sounds small numerically, but if I lived in Tel Aviv, I'd take the better safe than sorry route. The risk is, for example, about twice the risk of being murdered in New York City in any given year, a risk which many people spend lots of money trying to minimize. – ohwilleke Nov 17 '23 at 23:05
  • Anyone who drives a car in Tel Aviv is at a bigger risk than the person who never goes to a bomb shelter, no? – JonathanReez Nov 17 '23 at 23:26
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    @JonathanReez No. – ohwilleke Nov 17 '23 at 23:27
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    @JonathanReez it's still worth trying to avoid low probability events when they would have high impact. Here people would be risking their lives on the chance of the missiles not hitting nearly. Going to a shelter is probably not so bothersome. – Ángel Nov 18 '23 at 00:25
  • @Ángel if you go to a bomb shelter you're not doing something else with your life, creating an opportunity cost. The cost is low but so is the potential benefit, given the low risk. – JonathanReez Nov 18 '23 at 00:59
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    Oh, sure. There is a cost in going to the shelter vs doing something else. People might weight differently their current "something else" vs the safety provided (which is not complete, the shelter will simply highly decrease the danger, but will not bring it down to zero). However, when considering people's motivations you should take into account the perceived risks/benefits. – Ángel Nov 18 '23 at 03:15
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    The personal estimations of those living in Israel might be of an higher risk than the mathematical one (specially since Iron Dome is now blocking most missiles), specially since they will be acutely aware of other attacks, material damages and casualties. What surprises me is the stance that people would prefer not to get shelter. While there might be some cases, I would expect < 1%. – Ángel Nov 18 '23 at 03:15
  • Note that even if the missile is intercepted or doesn't directly hit any building there are still fragments, so the risk is a bit higher than what 1 in 10,000 implies. – Command Master Nov 18 '23 at 03:22