Tel Aviv Settles Into a War Routine: It Buries Its Dead, Braces for More : Israel: Residents are convinced that the threat of Iraqi missiles will hover over the area for a long time. They’re thankful for the Patriots.

As rabbis pronounced the final funeral blessings Wednesday over a victim of the Iraqi missile attack the night before, Alexander Shmueli turned away from the small, somber group at the graveside with a scowl.

“Next time, it could fall on my family’s heads,” the Soviet-born physicist, a neighbor of heart-attack victim Abraham Moldavsky, said. “This will go on for a long time; no one knows how long.”

The moaning alarms, the booms, the television footage of bloodied victims and the government promises of eventual retaliation--all are becoming a familiar routine for residents of this anxious city.

And the destruction wrought by Tuesday’s attack in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan convinced many Israelis that the threat of Iraqi missiles will hover over Tel Aviv for a long time--perhaps reduced but not eliminated by the successful interception of an incoming Iraqi missile over northern Israel on Wednesday night.

That American-made Patriot missiles brought down the incoming Iraqi Scud is “wonderful,” said Eli, a Tel Aviv taxi driver. “But it’s not finished. The Iraqis haven’t sent us the ‘dessert’ yet,” the worst they have to offer.

Tel Aviv Mayor Shlomo Lahat acknowledged that the city’s tense new routine is unpleasant but said his countrymen are tough enough to take it.

“How long can we live like this?” he asked Wednesday. “Ten years, 20 years--it shouldn’t frighten people.”

Israeli newspapers splashed giant headlines such as “Missiles of Death and Destruction” across their front pages Wednesday, but in the inside editorials, their messages echoed Lahat’s.

“Basically,” Emanuel Rozen wrote in the daily paper Maariv, “the defense establishment is telling us, ‘We’re living under a new threat, we have to get used to this, we have to live with it.”

The daily Hadashot commented: “The missile that landed in the Tel Aviv area yesterday removed the last illusions that remained” after two days of quiet--that the attacks had stopped. “We can’t count on miracles anymore.”

In the Knesset, Israeli lawmakers turned the missile attacks into one more topic for factional squabbles and lofty calls to action, delving into insurance arrangements for those whose houses were damaged and salary provisions for the days of work that Israelis missed because of the prolonged alert.

Lahat said that more than 1,000 people were evacuated from their homes because of the attacks, and all were given rooms immediately in hotels. He pledged that their homes will be rebuilt even better than before.

At the Kfar Maccabiah resort hotel in suburban Tel Aviv, a dozen people from among almost 200 who had been given shelter there after Tuesday night’s attack clustered in a meeting room--where 9-year-old Vered Zamir lay on the floor with paper and paints, expressing the emotions of the previous night.

Her drawing showed three missiles rocketing through the sky, and an accompanying poem she wrote read in part: “I saw a tree fall. I ran home. I heard twice the boom. The army made all the bombs fall down, except for the one I heard.”

Israeli psychologist Dov Friedlander appeared on Israeli television Wednesday night with advice for adjusting to what could be a prolonged period of added stress.

Sleeplessness and jumpiness are to be expected, he said, and the best cure is for people to communicate their anxieties to others.

At Abraham Moldavsky’s funeral, Yaakov Ariel, the chief rabbi of Ramat Gan, tried to offer some spiritual support to the widow, Moldavsky’s son and daughter, and a small group of friends and relatives.

“This missile was directed at all our hearts,” he said.

But, he declared, although Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sent the missile that led to Moldavsky’s death in a room near where it landed “because he wanted to hit everybody, still, the people of Israel will prevail.”

Most stores opened in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, but school remained canceled throughout the country and traffic was far lighter than usual. Tel Aviv residents continued to stream out to other, less dangerous parts of the country.

Public gatherings were still forbidden, to reduce the chances that many people would be hit by one missile, but one festive exception was allowed:

At the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv, employees Corinne Ben-Haroush and Amit Nishri got defiantly married in the lobby Wednesday afternoon.

The bride carried a gas mask--but not up to the altar.