JERUSALEM -- Crowds of civilians in costumes were literally dancing in the streets as they marked the Purim holiday here when air-raid sirens rang out. Immediately, people streamed toward the shelters -- some clutching babies, others drinks.
On this occasion, the shelter was a nearby underground parking lot where revelers continued the party, spinning around with arms linked and singing vigorously. One man was attached to an inflatable horse. A child was dressed as a chick, a parent as a penguin.
It was a jarring moment where a high-spirited party collided with war.
"It's definitely scary but I think that we know we're going to be OK. It's happened before," said Rebecca, a 20-something American woman with a 1-year-old child in her arms who moved to Israel three years ago.
"This is part of living in Israel. You know, you got to just take the punches," she told RFE/RL.
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Israeli Purim Celebrations Defy Iranian Missiles
Her husband, Daniel, said the incoming Iranian ballistic missile attack was "symbolic" given that Purim marks a failed attempt to wipe out Jews during the Persian Empire.
"We have rockets raining down on us. It's very comforting to know that God is on our side and that history repeats itself, and we're going to be redeemed again," he said.
Israel marked day five of its conflict with Iran with intermittent alarms but no reported injuries or fatalities. During an earlier attack, sheltering in a different bunker, low thuds and booms were heard as air defense intercepted missiles.
On each occasion, it was not long before people's phones buzzed with all-clear messages on their warning apps. The party in the parking lot simply moved back upstairs and into the late afternoon sunshine.
A moment of joy amid the sirens in Jerusalem on March 4.
Within minutes, the streets were again filled with hooting car horns and inebriated cries of greeting. There was a heady mix of alcohol, adrenaline, relief, and defiance.
"The war is a little bit crazy. With the war and everything, we're just trying to celebrate and we're being bombed -- we've got to run into the shelters every couple of minutes," Jerusalem resident Shimon Barenen told RFE/RL.
"We're just trying to keep up the spirit," he added.
Later, at a roadside Lebanese restaurant on the road toward Tel Aviv, there was a more sober mood as around 20 people crammed into a tiny bunker. A woman cried softly, her husband cradling her in his arms. A family of American tourists worried how they would get out of Israel and home to California. Again, there was the thud of missiles being intercepted overhead.
The mood only lightened when an Indian TV journalist backed into the room, speaking excitedly into a phone on a selfie stick, drawing groans and laughs in equal measure.
On this occasion, the remains of the Iranian missile were nearby. Emergency services fought their way past early evening traffic heading to and from Purim celebrations, with police officers frantically gesturing to drivers to clear a path. A roadblock to stop people driving in the direction of the crash site snarled the traffic further.
An intimate, sober moment in a shelter on the road to Tel Aviv on March 4.
Once again, this incident passed off without any injuries or deaths. Israel's air defense are largely holding firm so far against missiles from Iran and rockets and drones fired from Lebanon by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group regarded as a terrorist organization by both Israel and the United States.
Israel's wars with its regional neighbors have usually been characterized by asymmetrical levels of casualties, offensive capacity, and air defenses -- in Israel's favor.
This time is no exception. As of March 4, the country had suffered 12 civilian fatalities, mostly in a single strike at Beit Shemesh that was a direct hit on a housing block.
The HRANA human rights group, which monitors events in Iran, says that more than 1,000 Iranian civilians have been killed in the Israeli and US air campaign that began on February 28.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on March 4 that US and Israeli air forces had now achieved close to "uncontested" control of Iranian air space.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said any new leader appointed in Iran to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as supreme leader after his death in an air strike on February 28, the first day of the campaign, "would be an unequivocal target for elimination."
SEE ALSO: The Administrator, The Wild Card, The Heir: The Clerics Vying For Iran's Top JobThe military balance is clearly in favor of Israel and the United States. Yet Iran retains, for now, the ability to hit back.
As night fell on March 4, there were yet more sirens. Israelis have lived through this for years, especially during the war in Gaza with Hamas -- also regarded by the United States and Israel as a terrorist group.
But, said a 37-year-old engineer who gave her name only as Anna, "we are not used to it." Anna told RFE/RL she doesn't have a shelter in her building, so she comes to a building across the street to seek safety.
When it was Hamas attacking, she said, she stopped bothering. But Iran, she said, is a much greater threat. "It's really scary."