JTA — Two floors underground, past dumpsters and oil-laden puddles, through a reinforced Cold War-era door, a bomb shelter is buried underneath Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station.

Built in 1993 to accommodate more than 16,000 Israelis, the shelter found new life during the Israel-Iran war as a public refuge for residents of Neve Shaanan, among Tel Aviv’s most diverse neighborhoods and one of its poorest, home mainly to asylum seekers and foreign workers.

With few other options for public shelters in south Tel Aviv, residents pitched tents in the squalor of a space that had fallen into disrepair — with pipes dripping and rats scurrying — for more than 38 days as Israel and Iran exchanged missile fire until a ceasefire that began on April 8 halted the fighting.

“It’s very difficult. Not just because of the war, but because of the conditions we’re living in,” Gloria Arca, who took refuge inside the shelter with her son, Noam, said in Spanish during an interview in April. “We’re protected from the missiles, but inside we’re not safe.”

For many Israelis, the bus station occupies a space that balances between nostalgia and revulsion. Until 2018, the station was a main node for travel in and out of Tel Aviv. Since then, ridership has dropped, and now the hulking structure is seen as little more than an eyesore. During Israel’s 12-day war with Iran last year, a short video by Israeli comedians went viral for sharing the station’s GPS coordinates in a video that jokingly urged Iran, “Please don’t bomb this bus station.”

Yet the station also offers a concrete window into Israel’s widening reliance on foreign workers, which has surged in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught.

When there is no war, the shelter functions as a community center, complete with a Filipino church, a refugee health clinic, and retailers catering to customers in more than a dozen languages.

During wartime, the station takes on a new and vitally important role as a shelter for those who have none in their homes or neighborhoods, no family in the country whose homes they can flee to and little ability to pay for temporary accommodation somewhere safer.

Arca, who came to Israel more than two decades ago from Colombia and is in the country legally, knew that it would take her and Noam more than 10 minutes to get to a shelter from their home — longer than Israel’s advanced missile warning system allows. So they decided to move into the bus station, pitching a tent alongside some of their neighbors.

Depending on the day, more than 200 residents spent their nights in the shelter during the war, according to Sigal Rozen, public policy coordinator at the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants.

“It’s not easy, especially with young children and families with special needs,” she said. “You can’t get up in the middle of the night and just run.”

The Hotline,........

© The Times of Israel