Hi, it's Manvine here.

We've got an extra special episode for this weekend's Sunday edition, two stories from Israel.

So, without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Taryn Siegel, one of our producers here at The Story.

From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is The Story. I'm Taryn Segal. Last weekend on Friday, the Sunday Times Josh Glancy landed in Tel Aviv.

So I'm just walking along the beachfront in Tel Aviv past the skateboarding park.

And superficially, at least, everything looks quite normal.

People are doing weights

they're playing biff bat they're swimming it's a lovely sunny day there was a siren earlier after

hooty missiles were fired at central israel so people have spent some time in the air raid shelter this

morning but on the whole there is a sort of sense of eerie normality to the place.

This is a country that's been at war for best part of 16 months.

But you don't have to look very far or scratch very deep beneath the surface

to realise that all is not quite as it should be.

Yeah. is to realize that all is not quite as it should be. Two days earlier, after eight months of negotiations,

the outline of a ceasefire had been agreed to in principle.

It would take another two days for it to be officially confirmed by Israel's

Prime Minister, Benjamin and Yahoo, and go into effect at 11.15 a.m. local time on Sunday.

But at the time on Friday, both sides were frozen, with hope and with fear. No hostages at that

point had yet been released.

You know, there are yellow ribbons signifying the campaign to bring the hostages home everywhere. The faces of the hostages are plastered on every wall, every window, every bench.

There are stickers and posters. And so there's this kind of dual normality this two-track

situation where life is getting back to normal in some ways but in other ways it's still October

...