TEL AVIV — On a wide beach in Tel Aviv, I recently watched two Israeli men — wearing tight neon bathing suits that would make many Americans blush — play a game of paddle ball. They impressively smashed their serves and volleys with decisive forehands and backhands and dove in the sand to make saves.

A few feet away, a couple of young women in skimpy bikinis with tattoos on their ankles and shoulders stretched into yoga positions in the shade of a wooden gazebo.

You can buy ice cream and cold beer on the beach and nobody seems to litter.

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If Tel Aviv’s beachfront sounds like a island of paradise in the midst of the turbulent Middle East — that’s because it is. And Israeli officials intend to keep it that way.

While the chaos unleashed by the Arab Spring continues to reverberate across the region, Israel, a small country the size of New Jersey, has been busily building about 500 miles of fence, walls and barricades to keep the surrounding Arab world out.

Keeping a lid on Gaza
Just 45 miles south of the paddle ball players in neon, Hamas runs the Gaza Strip, the narrow Palestinian territory squeezed between Egypt and Israel. 

Hamas is a Palestinian political party with an aggressive militant wing. At its rallies, Hamas supporters routinely chant that one day they will destroy Israel and that Palestinians will return to their homes where Jews now live. Hamas has long been Israel's enemy, but in the wake of the Arab Spring, the group is empowered like never before.

Just last November, Hamas and Israel fought a brief war. Hamas launched rockets at southern Israel, and for the first time in the group’s history, at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Many of the rockets were shot down by Israel’s U.S.-funded Iron Dome missile defense system.

More than 150 Palestinians and at least six Israelis were killed in the fighting. But Hamas walked away with significant political recognition. 

Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi sent his prime minister to Gaza during the fighting to show solidarity with Hamas. That would never have happened under former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. 

Mubarak didn’t trust Hamas and kept them weak. In fact, during the previous, and far more severe, Gaza-Israel war in early 2009, Mubarak effectively helped Israel target Hamas by cutting off its border, denying escape and resupply routes. 

But ever since the Arab Spring reset the Middle East and unleashed anti-Israel passions that Arab strongmen — like Mubarak — once kept at bay, Israel feels threatened. And they are fortifying their defenses.

Gaza tunnel
Now getting in and out of the Gaza Strip is increasingly difficult and bizarre.   

When you exit Israel, you must first pass through a series of metal detectors and X-ray machines, before entering a long Israeli-controlled tunnel.

The tunnel is above ground, fenced in on both sides, and with a wire roof. It runs along the ground like a metal snake. It's about 20 feet wide and stretches for about a mile with a dog-leg turn in the middle. There are cement blocks in the tunnel so you can’t drive a car through it. You have to walk, dragging your bags. It feels like you’re passing through a wormhole from a beach community into a prison. 

Making the tunnel stranger still is its quiet loneliness. There aren’t any Israeli guards or officers in the tunnel. As you walk with your bags, every few hundred yards you come to a closed gate. A camera and microphone over the gate turn on as you approach. You call out to an unseen guard that you’d like to advance and, if he approves, the gate clicks open and you move to the next barrier.

Egypt fence
Beyond Gaza, about 100 miles to the southeast of the gazebos shading women on Tel Aviv’s beach, is Israel’s border with Egypt. For decades, the border was protected naturally by the bare and jagged Sinai Mountains and the open desert.  

But now with Mubarak gone, a metal snake is going up along the Egyptian border, too.  

Israel is building a 150 mile fence along the Egyptian border. It’s nearly finished — with only 6.2 miles left to go.

The fence has two layers, is 20 feet high and is topped with razor wire. It also plunges several feet under the sand, so you can’t dig underneath it. Israel clearly doesn’t feel the mountains and desert offer enough protection anymore.

The Wall
Back on the beach in Tel Aviv, few people talk about their increasingly hostile neighbors in Gaza and Egypt, or the fences that keep them out. But other barriers are even closer.

Just 40 miles east of Tel Aviv, a giant wall cuts off the West Bank — the landlocked Palestinian territory surrounded on three sides by Israel, and one side by Jordan. Palestinians call it the "apartheid wall" because it keeps them penned in. Israel built the wall during a spate of Hamas suicide attacks and since its construction the number of bombings in Israel has plummeted.

Keeping Syria out, too
About 100 miles north of the Tel Aviv, a new fence is going up along the border with Syria. Only about 10 miles of that barrier, which looks just like the one with Egypt, is finished. The rest is going up fast.

As I walked along the new fence with Syria with our cameraman and producer a few days ago, we were stopped by a group of Israeli border guards who politely told us to leave. 

The border guards, based on a hill overlooking the fence, told me they had seen fighting between Syrian government troops and rebels just a few hundred yards away from their base. The chief of staff of the Israeli military said at a conference this month that he believes it’s only a matter of time before armed factions in Syria turn their attention to Israel.

"We see terror organizations that are increasingly gaining footholds in the territory and they are fighting against Assad. Guess what? We’ll be next in line," said Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz.

'Fear index' down
As Israel waits for the political storm in the Arab world to pass, it has become a fortress nation, what some experts call a "garrison state." 

Perhaps it’s human nature, but living in a bubble has some advantages. Fences and walls can be effective and even soothing, at least for those who build them.

A study by Haifa University’s National Security Center published this month in the Israel newspaper Haaretz said Israelis have never felt more secure in their borders. The so-called annual "fear index” is at an all-time low. 

"People in Israel are simply optimistic. As a result of a hundred years of Zionism that met with difficult challenges, the public's conceptions are that we have overcome that, and that we will overcome it in the future," Prof. Gabriel Ben-Dor, the director of the study, told Haaretz.

But there’s twist. Israel’s Arab citizens, who may be more in touch with the profound changes in the region that they watch unfolding on Arabic-language television, were far less convinced about Israel’s security than Jewish respondents to the survey.

"It is possible the Arab population is seriously and intensively following what is happening across the border, and they judge the situation differently," said Ben-Dor.

The Israeli military is certainly aware that things have changed for Israel.

But that apparently hasn’t sunk in for most Israelis, or, just like people on the beaches of Tel Aviv, perhaps they don’t want to think about it.

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Updated at 10:40 a.m. ET: The remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were exhumed from his grave on Tuesday -- eight years after his death at age 75 — as part of an investigation into allegations that he was poisoned, according to official Palestinian radio. 

Arafat's body was uncovered in its grave and samples were removed without having to lift the corpse from the ground. As a result, a planned reburial ceremony with full military honors was called off.

The tomb was resealed in hours and wreaths were placed by Palestinian leaders including Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

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"The state of the body was exactly what you would expect to find for someone who has been buried for eight years. There was nothing out of the ordinary," Health Minister Hani Abdeen told a news conference.

A Palestinian medical team took samples and gave them to Swiss, French and Russian experts who flew in for the exhumation and who will examine them in their home countries, the officials said. Samples were taken earlier from Arafat's bedroom, office and personal belongings, they said.

Arafat case: 'Proof' still might elude Palestinians

French judges opened a murder inquiry into Arafat's death in August after a Swiss institute said it had discovered high levels of radioactive polonium on his clothing.

Jordanian doctor Abdullah al Bashir, head of the Palestinian medical committee, said about 20 samples were taken and analysis would take at least three months.

"In order to do these analyses, to check, cross-check and double cross-check, it will take several months and I don't think we'll have anything tangible available before March or April next year," said Darcy Christen, spokesman for Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland that carried out tests on Arafat's clothes.

Rumors of foul play have long surrounded the sudden demise of Arafat, a champion of Palestinian statehood from the time he was 19, and eventually, the democratically elected president of the Palestinian Authority.

Arafat was revered by many Palestinians and Arabs as a freedom fighter and reviled by many Israelis and its allies as a terrorist for his relentless fight for Palestinian self-determination. But he also had enemies and rivals within the Arab and Palestinian political circles.

He died in November 2004 at a French military hospital, a month after suddenly falling ill. The rapid deterioration of his health and death baffled doctors who were trying to treat him in France, and an autopsy was never performed at the request of his widow, Suha.

'A painful necessity'
While the immediate cause of death was a stroke, the underlying source of an illness he suffered in his final weeks has never been clear, leading to persistent speculation in the Arab world that Israel poisoned him. Israel has denied such allegations.

Poisoning as a cause of death gained currency after a Swiss institute said it had found high levels of radioactive polonium on Arafat's clothing, which was supplied by Suha, prompting the French to open a formal murder inquiry.

Polonium was the substance that killed Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. Litvenenko was a Russian ex-spy who later became a relentless critic of the Kremlin.

"It is a painful necessity" to exhume the body of Arafat, said Tawfiq al-Tirawi, who is in charge of the Palestinian committee overseeing the investigation, speaking to reporters in Ramallah on Saturday.

Tirawi said the Palestinians had "evidence which suggests Arafat was assassinated by Israelis," Reuters reported.

The exhumation might not resolve the mystery. Polonium-210 decomposes rapidly, and some experts say it is not clear whether any remaining samples will be sufficient for testing. 

NBC's Kari Huus, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Updated at 4 p.m. ET: Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire Wednesday, ending eight days of fighting that killed more than 140 Palestinians and five Israelis.

“The United States welcomes the agreement today for the cease-fire in Gaza," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a news conference alongside Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr. "This is a critical moment for the region."

The cease-fire started at 9 p.m. Cairo time (2 p.m. ET). Hundreds took to the streets of Gaza City to celebrate the cease-fire, NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reported. Celebratory gun fire erupted across the city, whose streets gradually filled with crowds waving Palestinian flags. Ululating women leaned out of windows and fireworks lit up the sky.

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"Allahu akbar, (God is greatest), dear people of Gaza you won," blared mosque loudspeakers in the enclave as the truce took effect. "You have broken the arrogance of the Jews."

Both sides fought right up to 9 p.m., when hostilities were due to stop, with several explosions shaking Gaza City and rockets hitting the Israeli city of Beersheba.

If it holds, the truce will give 1.7 million Gazans respite from days of ferocious air strikes and halt rocket salvoes from militants that unnerved a million people in southern Israel and reached Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the first time.

During the Cairo news conference, Clinton thanked Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi for his mediation efforts and pledged to work with partners in the region "to consolidate this progress, improve conditions for the people of Gaza, provide security for the people of Israel."

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the agreement, adding that he had spoken with President Barack Obama and had agreed to fight together against "weapons of terror."

"Israel cannot sit with its arms folded against its enemies," he said in a news conference.

Netanyahu paid tribute to U.S. diplomacy and Morsi's leadership, but also to Israel's resolve and the armed forces.

"I am proud to be your prime minister," he said.

According to the cease-fire agreement: Israel will stop attacks on Gaza by land, sea and air and stop incursions and targeted assassinations; Palestinian factions will stop hostilities from the Gaza Strip against Israel; Israel will ease the movement of people and goods at border-crossing areas.

Egypt is the "sponsor" of the cease-fire agreement.

In comments following the cease-fire announcement, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the army had been effective, achieving maximum destruction to Hamas with minimum loss of civilian life.

Barak added that the Iron Dome defense system was "an exceptional success," knocking down 500 incoming missiles.

The exiled leader of Hamas said that if Israel complied with the cease-fire, Palestinians would as well but they would respond to any Israeli violation.

"If Israel complies, we are compliant. If it does not comply, our hands are on the trigger," Khaled Meshaal said in Cairo. 

Meshaal also thanked Egypt for helping mediate the Gaza ceasefire and praised Iran for providing Gazans with financing and arms.

"We have come out of this battle with our heads up high," he said, adding that Israel had been defeated and failed in its "adventure."

"It failed, praise be to God," Meshaal said of Israel's eight days of attacks on Gaza, which the Jewish state said were meant to stop increasing Palestinian rocket fire from the enclave targeting its cities and towns.

Hours before the cease-fire announcement, an explosion on a bus in Tel Aviv injured 19 people, three of them seriously, an official told NBC News.

Tel Aviv police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told the U.K.'s Sky News that the bus blast took place in the heart of the city and that the surrounding area had been cordoned off as police searched for suspects.

"This was a terrorist attack," Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for Netanyahu, told Reuters.

The White House condemned the attack as "outrageous." In a statement, it reaffirmed the United States' "unshakable commitment to Israel's security and our deep friendship and solidarity with the Israeli people."

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri praised the bombing, but stopped short of claiming responsibility.

"Hamas blesses the attack in Tel Aviv and sees it as a natural response to the Israeli massacres...in Gaza," he told Reuters. "Palestinian factions will resort to all means in order to protect our Palestinian civilians in the absence of a world effort to stop the Israeli aggression."

More photos: Explosion hits bus in Tel Aviv

Sweet cakes were handed out in celebration of the blast in Gaza's main hospital, which has been inundated with wounded from the round-the-clock Israeli bombing and shelling, Reuters reported. Celebratory gunfire rang out in Gaza City when local radio stations reported the news.

The last time Israel's commercial capital was hit by a serious bomb blast was in April 2006, when a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 11 people at a sandwich stand near the city's old central bus station.

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Like most Western powers, Washington shuns Hamas as an obstacle to peace and has blamed it for the Gaza conflagration.

A U.N. Security Council statement condemning the conflict was blocked on Tuesday by the United States, which complained that it "failed to address the root cause" -- the Palestinian rockets.

Meanwhile, the head of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard has disclosed his country has given fighters in Gaza the ability to produce longer-range missiles on their own, without direct shipments. The comments, by Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, quoted by the semi-official ISNA news agency, offer some of the clearest insights on Iran's weapons support for Hamas.

Previously, Iran denied it directly supplied Hamas with the Fajr-5 rockets being fired at Israel in recent days.

NBC's Lawahez Jabari, Ian Johnston and Andy Eckardt, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET: Following her arrival in Israel, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated at a press conference Tuesday that America's commitment to Israel's security is "rock solid," adding that "the goal must be a durable outcome that promotes regional stability and advances the security and legitimate aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians alike."

"The rocket attacks from terrorist organizations inside Gaza on Israeli cities and towns must end, and a broader calm restored," Clinton said, adding that there are no substitutes for security and a just and lasting peace.

Speaking in Jerusalem, Clinton also offered her condolences for those lost in the violence.

"Our hearts break for the loss of every civilian, Israeli and Palestinian, and for all those who have been wounded and are living in fear and danger," she said, adding that she would work with Israel and Egypt on brokering a truce in Gaza "in the days ahead."

Israel is prepared to escalate its offensive but would prefer a long-term diplomatic solution, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.

"If there is a possibility of achieving a long-term solution to this problem with diplomatic means, we prefer that," he said in a public statement alongside Clinton.

"But if not, I'm sure you understand that Israel will have to take whatever action is necessary to defend its people."

Earlier, a Hamas official said a truce with Israel would not be reached Tuesday because the Israeli government had yet to respond to proposals.

"The Israeli side has not responded yet, so we will not hold a (news) conference this evening and must wait until tomorrow," Ezzat al-Rishq, a senior Hamas leader, told Reuters. "The truce is now held up because we are waiting for the Israeli side to respond," he added in a short telephone interview.

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Clinton landed at 9:51 p.m. local time in Tel Aviv, where she met with Netanyahu. Later, Clinton will meet with the President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah before heading to Cairo.

A U.S. official stressed to NBC News that Clinton would not meet with representatives of Hamas, the Islamist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, largely because of its failure to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel's right to exist.

Egyptian officials said talks are ongoing to reach a truce in Gaza, although any agreement appears unlikely to address the long-term areas of disagreement between Israel and the Hamas leaders of the Gaza Strip, NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reported Tuesday.

The expected "cessation of hostilities" will call on all parties to use maximum restraint, according to one former intelligence official familiar with the talks.

Earlier Tuesday, President Barack Obama spoke to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who is seeking to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. 

According to White House officials, Obama spoke to Morsi for the third time in 24 hours. Deputy National Security adviser Ben Rhodes said Obama wanted to talk to Morsi before Clinton's arrival in Israel.

Rhodes said Obama underscored the importance of Morsi working toward a de-escalation to the conflict in Gaza. He also commended Morsi's efforts to pursue a de-escalation and acknowledged Egypt's important role in the region's security.

Rhodes said Obama emphasized the importance of a diplomatic solution, but said that rocket fire from Gaza into Israel must stop.

Israel Defense Forces continued airstrikes overnight, and also said 39 rockets fired from Gaza hit Israel Tuesday in a message on its Twitter account.

Since Israel launched its military campaign seven days ago in response to rocket fire, more than 100 people in Gaza and three people in Israel have been killed.

Internationally, the main focus was on stopping the violence, and Morsi hinted at a possible breakthrough Tuesday.

Speaking at his sister's funeral in Egypt, Morsi said the "aggression on Gaza" would end Tuesday. He made the apparently off-the-cuff comments in front of mourners who had come to pay their respects, but did not elaborate. Several journalists traveling with Morsi confirmed he made the remark.

'Army must invade': In southern Israel, support grows for action in Gaza

In Jerusalem, Netanyahu said Israel would be a “willing partner” in a cease-fire, but also issued a warning.

He said if further military action proved necessary “to stop the constant barrage of rockets, Israel will not hesitate to do what is necessary to defend our people.”

And Mohammed Deif, the new leader of Hamas' military wing, sounded a defiant note, saying that the movement was ready to fight and would not back down from its efforts to liberate Palestine.

He was speaking in his first audio recording since the group’s previous top military commander, Ahmed Jabari, was killed in an Israeli airstrike Wednesday. Deif, who has survived several assassination attempts in the past, called for Hamas’ supporters to remain steadfast. 

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'Difficult' situation

It is unclear how much influence Clinton can have on the situation.

“She is going to go out there to be in the region to have direct, face-to-face discussions with those leaders,” Rhodes said. “I don’t want to predict exactly what the outcome of those discussions will be. We all know how difficult this situation is.” 

The White House thinks the leaders who are heavily involved in the region “understand what the best outcome is,” Rhodes added, but that a peaceful goal is only achievable “if Hamas takes action to stop what they’ve been doing.”

An Israeli soldier and a civilian died when rockets exploded near the Gaza frontier, police and the army said.

An Israeli air strike on two cars in the Gaza Strip killed six Palestinians Tuesday, while two children died in an attack in the north of the territory, local residents and medics told Reuters. 

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Tuesday for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and said a threatened Israeli ground operation in the Palestinian enclave would be a “dangerous escalation” that must be avoided.

Later, standing alongside Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Ban urged Israel to show "maximum restraint" and condemned rocket attacks on Israel.

Also Tuesday, Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby and the foreign ministers of Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia and Sudan traveled from Egypt to Gaza in an unprecedented move designed to show solidarity with the Palestinians, NBC News reported.

US Embassy guard wounded
Meanwhile, a man was arrested after he stabbed a security guard Tuesday at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, a police spokesman told Reuters. 

The spokesman said the guard opened fire during the attack.

Israel Radio said the attacker, who police said was armed with a knife and an ax, was wounded. 

NBC's Shawna Thomas, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ian Johnston, and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Updated at 3:02 p.m. ET: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The leader of Hamas said Monday it was up to Israel to end the new conflict it had started, adding that a "land war" would cost Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the election.

"[Netanyahu] can do it, but he knows that it will not be a picnic and that it could be his political death and cost him the elections," Khaled Meshaal, exiled leader of Hamas, told a news conference in Cairo.

"Whoever started the war must end it," Meshaal said, adding that Netanyahu, who faces an election in January, had asked for a truce, an assertion a senior Israeli official described as untrue.

For its part, Israel said that while it was prepared to step up its offensive by sending in troops, it preferred a diplomatic solution that would end Palestinian rocket fire.

Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon has said that "if there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack."

According to a poll by Israel's Haaretz newspaper, 84 percent of Israelis supported the current Gaza assault, but only 30 percent wanted an invasion, while 19 percent wanted their government to work on securing a truce soon.

Acting as a mediator, Egypt said Monday that a deal for a truce to end the fighting could be close, as Israel bombed dozens of suspected guerrilla sites in the densely populated Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in its campaign to quell militant rocket fire menacing nearly half of Israel's population.

Twelve Palestinian civilians and four fighters were killed in the sixth day of fighting, local officials said, raising the number of Palestinian dead to 101, the Hamas-run Health Ministry told Reuters, listing 24 children among them. Hospital officials in Gaza said more than half of those killed were non-combatants. Three Israeli civilians died on Thursday in a rocket strike and dozens others have been wounded.

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Among the targets struck in Gaza City Monday was the Al Shorouq media building, which Israeli warplanes hit for the second straight day. The attack targeted a second-floor apartment used by a leading Islamic Jihad militant. He was killed and four others were injured, NBC News' Ayman Mohyeldin reported.

The Israeli military said it targeted only the floor used by the militants. “The senior [Islamic Jihad] cadre was operating in a media building. They weren’t there to be interviewed. They were using reporters as human shields,” it said on Twitter.

But the lower floors of the building caught fire, trapping journalists on the higher levels. Firefighters were trying to put out the blaze and get the journalists out of the building. The Hamas TV station is located on the top floor.

Family mourned
Thousands turned out on Gaza's streets Monday to mourn four children and five women, who were among the 11 people killed in an Israeli strike that flattened a three-story home the previous day.

The bodies were wrapped in Palestinian and Hamas flags. Echoes of explosions mixed with cries of grief and defiant chants of "God is greatest."

Israel said it was investigating the strike that brought the home crashing down on the al-Dalu family, where the dead spanned four generations. Some Israeli newspapers said the wrong house may have been mistakenly targeted.

Since Wednesday, 877 rockets have been fired from Gaza toward Israel, the Israeli military said Monday. Of those, 570 rockets have struck Israel while the country’s air defense system has intercepted 307, according to the military. Forty-five rockets were fired at southern Israel on Monday, causing no casualties, police said.

Israel's decision to step up targeted attacks on leaders in Gaza on Sunday marked a new and risky phase of the operation, given the likelihood of civilian casualties in the crowded territory of 1.6 million Palestinians.

Negotiations inch forward
International efforts to wrest a cease-fire from the two sides has intensified despite the escalated hostilities. The failure to end the fighting could touch off an Israeli ground invasion, for which thousands of soldiers, backed by tanks and armored vehicles, have already been mobilized and dispatched to Gaza's border.

Leading cease-fire mediation efforts is Egypt, which borders both Israel and Gaza and whose Islamist-rooted government has been hosting leaders of Hamas.

“I strongly urge the parties to cooperate with all efforts led by Egypt to reach an immediate cease-fire," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said before leaving for Egypt. He visits Israel on Tuesday.

European Union governments also said they supported Egyptian efforts to mediate.

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Key players in the Israel-Gaza cross-border conflict

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On Sunday, President Barack Obama said it would be "preferable" to avoid a move into Gaza, but that Israel had a right to self-defense and no country would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr, Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby and several other Arab foreign ministers will visit Gaza on Tuesday to show solidarity with Palestinians. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will accompany them, officials said.

Forces gather
Israel launched the current offensive Wednesday after months of intensifying rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, which continued despite the strikes.

Israeli tanks, artillery and infantry have massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border and military convoys moved on roads in the area. Israel has also authorized the call-up of 75,000 military reservists, so far mobilizing around half that number.

Overnight, aircraft targeted about 80 militant sites, including underground rocket-launching sites, smuggling tunnels and training bases, as well as command posts and weapons storage facilities located in buildings owned by militant commanders, the military said Monday in a release.  

Aircraft and gunboats joined forces to attack police headquarters, and rocket squads were struck as they prepared to fire, the release said.

In all, more than 1,000 Gaza targets have been struck since the operation began.

Some Hamas rockets reached as far as Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial capital, but were shot down by the country's air defense system.

As a precaution against the rocket interceptions endangering nearby Ben-Gurion International Airport, civil aviation authorities said on Monday new flight paths were being used.

Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

Israel's declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and force Hamas to stop rocket fire that has bedeviled Israeli border towns for years. The rockets now have greater range, putting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem within their reach -- a strategic weapon for Gaza's otherwise massively outgunned guerrillas.

NBC News' Ayman Mohyeldin, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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TEL AVIV – Did you know:

• If a bomb explodes near you with a little bang, that's a sign it is carrying chemical or biological weapons? A loud bang means a conventional warhead.
• If an attack is chemical, you will know right away? But if it's biological you'll only find out after a few days.
• If it is nuclear, you should lie down and cover your head? And don't get up when the first blast wave passes over you because it will be followed by a second wave.

Useful, eh?

All these facts are good to know if you are in Israel and war with Iran, and its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, were to break out around you.

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Report: Iran mulls 'pre-emptive attack' against Israel; commander warns of 'World War III'

Or if something happened with Syria, Iran's ally, which has large stockpiles of biological and conventional weapons.

With the latest opinion polls showing that half of Israelis fear for the continued existence of their state if war breaks out with Iran, and with more than half rating the chance of such a war within a year as "medium" or "high,” the more you know about what the war would entail, the better.

Here are some more facts:

• If you suck a bead made of castor oil, it could kill you. It contains ricin, a lethal poison.
• After Chernobyl, it took 25 years before Welsh sheep could be eaten because the nuclear radiation settled over Wales as it drifted most of the way round the world.
• And cigarettes contain polonium 210, the poison used to murder the Soviet ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko.

Probably no country in the world is as prepared as Israel for such an attack, with every home built in the last 21 years possessing a mandatory bomb shelter. City centers have vast public shelters with special rooms set up for non-conventional attacks. And citizens are instructed in how to protect their bomb shelters against chemical and biological warfare.

Mistakes happen
But mistakes can happen, as I can personally attest. 

One evening in the winter of 1991 during the first Gulf War, with Iraqi Scud missiles rocketing over Jordan toward Israel, the bomb alarm sounded. My family quickly locked themselves in our bomb shelter, and I raced through the dark, silent streets to broadcast from our NBC News studio.

Israel's Netanyahu: Draw 'clear red line' to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons

This had become routine. I spent all night in the studio, responding to the many alarms, and went home around 5a.m. I didn't check on the family because I knew where the Scuds had fallen and none were near my home.

This one time, however, with 30 minutes to go before my next live broadcast hit, I had a sense that something was wrong. For the first time after an attack, I called home to see how my wife and my three sons, all aged below six, were faring.

No answer. I called again. No answer. Twenty-five minutes to go before my next “live hit” on TV with Tom Brokaw. I felt sick with worry. What could have happened?

I ran downstairs, jumped into my car and raced home. I figured a 10-minute drive, five minutes at home and 10 minutes back, I'd be in the studio with seconds to spare.

Life-saving decision
Ends up, because of that calculation, I saved my family's lives.

When the all-clear sounded, my wife, our three sons, my sister-in-law and the dog, a schnauzer called Tofi, couldn't get out of the shelter.

The heavy steel lock would not budge. They hung on it and pulled and tried and tried but could not open the door. When I arrived home, about two hours after they had entered the bomb shelter, I heard faint cries of "help, help."

Instead of pushing the handle up, they had been pulling it down, locking it instead of opening it.

I was able to open the door from the outside and all was well.

But if I had stuck to my usual routine and not called home and just returned at 5 a.m., after leaving them at 8 p.m. the night before, they would have been dead.

It's simple math: An adult breathes about one cubic meter of air per hour, children more. Five people in a small room of about nine cubic meters would begin to lose air after two hours. Seven hours? They'd have all been dead.

A miracle? Sixth sense? Whatever, it's a warning of what can go wrong in times of stress. And however prepared Israelis are for what awaits them, accidents happen. When Iraq attacked Israel in 1991, far more people died of heart attacks than Scud rockets.

Country on edge
Since that time, every apartment built in Israel must have a blast-proof room that protects citizens from conventional blasts and also, with plastic and tape, can protect against chemical and biological weapons too. Walls and doors are approximately 8-12 inches thick and doors and windows are airtight.

Every citizen has, in theory, a gas mask. In practice, there aren't enough to go around.

Everybody asks, do you think there will be war with Iran? Nobody knows, and if you see Israel’s crowded cafes, the bustling streets, the crammed beaches, you may think that nobody cares.

Yet Israel is a country on edge. Most seem to have bought Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s line that the price to pay to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb is much lower than the price to be paid if Iran has the bomb.

Fueling those thoughts are memories of what happened when the Nazis killed 6 million Jews. Today, there are approximately 6 million Jews in Israel. Few Israelis can argue against Netanyahu's insistence of: Never again.

And yet, I don't know anyone here who has prepared their bomb shelter. They're all a mess, used to store boxes, suitcases, footballs and wine. They are used as computer rooms, bicycle storage, play rooms. The attitude is, for the most part, we'll worry about it when the time comes.

Until then, live life.

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NEW YORK -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that a “clear red line” be set to stop Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, telling the U.N. General Assembly that with a nuclear Iran, no one in the world would be safe.

In a speech at the U.N. Thursday, Netanyahu said that Iran will have enough enriched uranium to build a bomb by next summer. He said his "red line" to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons is to stop it from accumulating that uranium -- because it would impossible to know when Iran has achieved the next step: building a detonator to fire a weapon.

At the U.N. podium, the Israeli prime minister showed a cartoon-like picture of a child's version of a bomb -- and drew a red line to illustrate his ultimatum.

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He said that he and Israel appreciated President Barack Obama's statement that the U.S. also would not let Iran get a bomb -- and that he is confident that together the U.S. and Israel can chart a path together.

Palestinian leader: We seek 'nonmember' UN status 

But he was very tough on Iran, reciting a litany of terrorism by Iranian proxies around the world and saying that given Iran's aggression without nuclear weapons, if it got nuclear weapons, who'd be safe anywhere?

In his speech, he also compared a nuclear-armed Iran with a nuclear-armed al-Qaida -- and said the only way to prevent war is to draw that red line against Iran accumulating enough enriched uranium to create a bomb.

Follow Andrea Mitchell on Twitter

An August report by U.N. inspectors said Iran has stockpiled 91.4 kg (about 200 lbs.) of the 20 percent material.

According to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, around 25 kg (about 55 lbs.) of uranium enriched to a 90 percent purity level would be needed for a single nuclear weapon.

Israel, believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to its existence and has expressed frustration over the failure of diplomacy and sanctions to rein in Tehran's nuclear activity. Iran says it is enriching uranium only for peaceful energy purposes, not for nuclear bombs.

Obama warned Iran on Tuesday in his speech to the General Assembly that he would do what it takes to prevent Tehran from getting nuclear arms and that "time is not unlimited" for diplomacy to resolve the issue.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said this week he did not take seriously the threat that Israel could launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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By Duncan Golestani
NBC News

JORDAN VALLEY -- Faisel Njoom undoubtedly has the best house in Auja. Drinking iced tea in the shade of his garden he talks with pride at being the biggest land owner in the village and the oranges and bananas that he once grew on his farm. Only later, standing in one of his dry and dusty fields in the Jordan Valley, does he become angry.

“Life without water is not a life,” he said as the sun began to set. “This land without water is like all the other deserts. We were born working this land.”

He says he couldn’t keep farming because the irrigation channels to his land began drying up in 2000. He, and many charities, blame the digging of a new well near the Auja Spring, designed to serve a nearby Israeli settlement.

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For first time in many years there is water flowing in the spring long after winter has finished because rainfall has increased by a fifth over the last year. Otherwise, the spring would now be dry. Almotaz Abadi, a consultant to the Palestinian Water Authority, explained that, rainfall is the biggest factor contributing to water availability, but the Auja Spring has been adversely affected by other factors, principally the new well.

The reminder of how plentiful water used to be in Auja has reignited resentment -- a feeling shared widely among Palestinians in the occupied territories. The World Bank and international charities accuse Israel of denying enough water to the Palestinians. Ironically, it’s a situation made worse by the Oslo Peace Accords.

The Oslo II agreement in 1995 set up a joint water committee to oversee management of the aquifers in the West Bank. It was supposed to encourage consensus, but a World Bank report in 2009 concluded Israel dominated the process, taking 80 percent of the water resources.  (In recognizing that the Palestinian Water Authority’s powers were severely limited, the report also criticized its management abilities).

Agriculture is key to the Palestinian economy and its third largest employer. But it could be much bigger. The World Bank found that problems with irrigation are holding the sector back, especially when combined with the Separation Barrier cutting off land and access to wells.

Many Palestinians see this water divide as a way of increasing their dependency on Israel. Amnesty International estimates some 180,000 to 200,000 Palestinians living in rural communities have no access to running water. It means many have to buy water from Israeli tankers at high prices.

Israelis complain of water scarcity too. After much persuasion with an armed guard, NBC News was allowed to film inside Yitav, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. It is indeed a green outpost in the desert, but the settlers say it comes at a high price – which they pay with their utility bills.

Israel’s Water Authority disputes the claims made by the World Bank and other charities. At their offices in Tel Aviv we were shown a map of locations where licenses have been granted for Palestinian wells, but never pumped. “You have to know most of the Palestinian cities in the West Bank have better access to water than residents in Amman, the capital of Jordan,” said Baruch Nager, Head of Water Administration for the West Bank.

Both sides have hydrological data to support their side of the argument, which makes it particularly hard to resolve.

Water is a ‘final status issue’ in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. No decisions will be taken on how control of the water is divided until there is a peace agreement. That, of course, has never looked further away.

With tensions between Israel and Iran running sky high over the latter's nuclear program, U.S. officials and military analysts are growing increasingly concerned that Israel will launch a multi-phase air and missile attack that could trigger waves of retaliatory missile strikes from Tehran.

Such a shootout could quickly spiral into a regional conflict that would potentially force the U.S. to intervene to protect its interests.

The emerging consensus among current and former U.S. officials and other experts interviewed by NBC News is that that an Israeli attack would be a multi-faceted assault on key Iranian nuclear installations, involving strikes by both warplanes and missiles. It could also include targeted attacks by Israeli special operations forces and possibly even the use of massive explosives-laden drones, they say.

The Iranian response to such an attack is uncertain, but many experts and officials believe it is likely to include retaliatory missile strikes. Iran has more missiles in its arsenal than Israel, according to some estimates, and has the capability of striking targets in most Israeli population centers.

"I think that it would strike Iran as a reasonable response, an eye for an eye," said Christopher J Ferrero, a professor of diplomacy at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and an expert on Middle East missile forces.

---

He also said Iran would likely attack major cities with its Shahab 3 missiles, which he said are not as accurate as the Israeli missiles, but would be an effective "instrument of terror … that could certainly cause significant damage to heavily populated suburban and urban areas.

 

 

Israel possesses advanced anti-missile defenses, but those systems could be overwhelmed if Tehran launched large numbers of missiles, as Ferrero expects.

Given the immense difficulties in carrying out successful air strikes on the four key Iranian installations using its warplanes alone -- as laid out last week by the New York Times, U.S. officials say Israel would be likely to coordinate such airstrikes with waves of missiles. This would greatly increase the chances of penetrating fortifications that Iran has built to protect some of its key installations and overwhelm Iran's air defenses, said the former and current U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Two words:  Jericho missiles," said one former White House and Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, when asked how Israel would attack Iranian targets at great distances. "They are conventionally armed, have a very small CEP (circular error of probability, meaning they are highly accurate) and can be used in conjunction with a strike fighter operation."

Israel has as many as 100 Jericho ballistic missiles – both short- and medium-range – as well as submarine-launched cruise missiles, though the officials say they believe the latter are unlikely to be used. The short-range Jericho I missiles would be of no use in an attack on Iran, because the targets are far beyond its 300-mile range. However, the  medium-range Jericho II's are capable of  hitting targets as far as 900 miles away – or as far east as Tehran. Israel also tested a Jericho III intercontinental ballistic missile in 2008 and Israeli media have reported that it may have deployed one or more of the weapons, which would put all of Iran within reach.

The missiles would most likely be launched from the Hirbat Zekharyah missile range, midway between Israel and the Mediterranean Coast, according to "Critical Mass: the Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World," by William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem, and various Israeli press reports.

Although designed to be part of Israel's nuclear deterrent force, the Jerichos can be equipped with high explosives as well as nuclear warheads. U.S. officials have said that an Israeli attack, if it happens, would be intended to surgically take out the nuclear facilities, not inflict the mass casualties that would result from a nuclear attack.

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Iran has no capability to defend against a missile strike, said Ferrero, the expert on Middle East missile arsenals.

"If the Jerichos are accurate enough to get to their targets, they will get to their targets," he said.

What Iran does have is hundreds of Shahab 3 medium range ballistic missiles, according to U.S. estimates. The Shahab 3 also has a range of roughly 900 miles.

Israel, possibly supplemented by U.S. shipborne anti-missile systems – the Aegis Standard Missile-2 -- could intercept and destroy some of the incoming Iranian missiles, said Ferrero. But the numbers favor Iran, he said.

"I believe that (the Iranians) have a sufficient inventory that they could overwhelm those missile defenses and still get enough missiles through to cause damage," he said.

The critical factor may be the number of  missile launchers in Iran's inventory, Ferrero said, because penetrating Israel's defenses would require numerous  missiles, but also enough launchers to be able to fire them off simultaneously. That number is a closely guarded secret, he said.

Additionally, U.S. intelligence estimates say Iran has supplied Hezbollah with more than 40,000 short-range rockets and missiles since 2006. However, U.S. officials are uncertain whether Hezbollah would follow Iranian orders, and risk Israeli retaliation or, if they did, how many they would fire.  The majority of the rockets and missiles are unguided.  Israel and the U.S. have worked on a short-range missile defense system called Iron Dome, but there are concerns that waves of attacks could overwhelm the system.

Also open to question in U.S. and Israeli military circles is whether an Israeli attack would meet its objective: setting back the Iranian nuclear program anywhere from two to five years.

U.S. officials say Israel would be likely to concentrate its attacks on four key Iranian nuclear complexes. Key facilities within those complexes – the Natanz and Fordo centrifuge facilities, both south of Tehran; the Arak research reactor, southwest of Tehran; and a uranium hexafloride production and research facility near the city of Isfahan – are protected by heavy fortifications, they said.

The Jerichos are stored in tunnels in limestone formations around Hirbat Zekharyah and rolled out for firing. They would likely be used as part of a one-two punch, the officials say. The first attack would be carried out by Israeli strike fighters and would be intended to breach the heavily fortified outer ceilings of the facilities. The second (and possibly even third) wave would be missile attacks aimed at destroying the facilities within, the officials said. 

Asked if Jerichos would have the accuracy and the explosive power to take out hardened bunkers or fortifications believed to be protecting Iran's most-sensitive underground nuclear facilities, a current U.S. official replied, "You would be surprised at their accuracy." The official added that the missiles' warheads would contain a special mix of explosives that could penetrate the Iranian defenses.

U.S. officials also say Israel may have learned the location of facilities that fabricate centrifuge components. These, too, could be targeted.

A 2010 book on the possibility of an Israeli attack laid out the difficulties Israel would face if it attempted to use only its strike fighters on those targets.

 "Attacks against the sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Arak alone would stretch Israel's capability and planners might be reluctant to enlarge the raid further," wrote authors Steven Simon and Dana H. Allin, in "The Sixth Crisis – Iran, Israel and the Rumors of War." Simon, then a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, now heads the Middle East Desk at the National Security Council.

The biggest problem is the fortification of the two centrifuge facilities. Simon and Allin describe the challenge using aircraft only.

"Natanz is the only one of the … likely targets that is largely underground, sheltered by up to 23 meters (75 feet) of soil and concrete," they wrote. "… Bombs used in a ‘burrowing' mode, however, could penetrate deeply enough to fragment the inner surface of the ceiling structures above the highly fragile centrifuge arrays and even precipitate the collapse of the entire structure."

But for the attack to have high odds of success, they argue, aircraft would have to drop additional bombs into the cavities created by the first bombs. That would require "time on target" -- a luxury that the Israeli jets at the outermost limits of their 1,100-mile range would likely not have. While they estimate the success rate of such a plan at "better than 70 percent," they call it "complicated and highly risky."

Another difficulty for attacking Israeli aircraft would be finding a route to the targets that could be flown covertly or with the tacit approval of Sunni Arab states, who are at least as frightened of an Iranian nuclear capability as the Israelis.

Simon and Allin (and others) have written that there are three "plausible routes" that Israeli warplanes would take to attack Iran: a northern approach, likely along the Syrian-Turkish border; a central path that would take them over Jordan and Iraq; and a southern route that would transit the lower end of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The southern route is the most likely, U.S. officials suggest, because the Saudis and other Sunni-dominated Gulf states are eager for someone to take out the Iranian threat. They prefer the U.S. do it, but have reportedly shared intelligence on the Iranian program with the Israelis, if only on a limited basis, according to the U.S. officials.

No matter what route the fighter bombers take, they would use what one U.S. official described as "high-low, low-high" flight paths – flying high first to increase fuel efficiency, then low for most of the trip to evade radar, then climbing high again as the bombs are released in what is known as a "flip toss" from as far as 10 miles from the target.

The Israelis would be prepared to lose aircraft if necessary, the officials said.

Although Simon and Allin do not discuss adding a missile component, other experts, including many current and former U.S. officials, believe the Israelis already have made a decision to have them in the attack menu.

Missile attacks would be coordinated with fighter-bomber attacks (presumably, the Israelis' F-16, F-18 and extended-range F-15I Strike Eagle). The missiles would have to be launched so that warheads strike targets following the strike fighter attacks.  Because of the short flight time, minutes rather than hours in the case of the aircraft, the missile launch would almost certainly take place at the last possible moment to ensure the secrecy of the overall attack.

The Israelis are not planning to use their submarine-launched cruise missile force -- "not enough of them," one official said of the subs. (The Israelis have long had nuclear tipped sub-launched cruise missiles as part of their deterrent force.) 

Beyond the strike fighters and the missile force, U.S. officials suggest the Israelis could use two other "weapons" against Iran.

The first is special operations forces that would be secretly inserted into the country. At the least, they could be employed to illuminate aim points for laser-guided bunker-busting bombs. At the most, they could launch their own attacks on facilities, particularly those believed to contain enriched uranium.

The other is a new generation of large drones with wingspans approaching those of a Boeing 777  (almost 200 feet). Costing $30 million each, the Heron drones are capable of remaining airborne for 40 hours at a time and have a range of 4,600 miles. While they can be equipped with surveillance and electronic warfare equipment, some officials call them "strike drones," meaning they could be loaded with explosives and used to attack Iranian targets.

While the initial days of an Israeli-Iranian conflict would probably be bloody, most experts say that the open warfare would be expected to wind down within days or weeks, since neither side has the ability to occupy the other's territory or enough missiles to sustain attacks.

But that would bring with it its own set of problems, as the conflict would be likely to continue on a lower level, involving covert operations and terrorism.

"You could have a very nasty covert war emerge," said Ferrero.

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.