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Israel appears to have pulled off an economic miracle despite nearly three years of war. The technology sector has soared, the markets have set records, and foreign capital has continued to flow in. But the boom is restricted to a narrow corridor of the economy: high-skilled, export-facing, and insulated from sirens. The gap between this miracle and the losses absorbed by ordinary citizens is the cost the war has exacted.

In June, a missile hit a vineyard near Bat Shlomo in the hills of northern Israel. The army had calculated it would fall on open ground, where nothing strategically vital would be lost. Israel’s finite, expensive interceptors were assigned elsewhere. The loss fell almost entirely on the family that farms it. The burned vines, the ruined harvest, years of growth erased by a single crater. The standard damage assessment by the government covered only a fraction of the losses. The grower is paying to test the scorched soil for contamination himself. The cold arithmetic of defense dictated that it was collateral damage worth accepting.

Israel’s economy has run on a version of this logic throughout nearly three years of war, and the parts of the market that were defended held remarkably. Tel Aviv’s benchmark index rose 52% in 2025, nearly tripling the S&P 500’s return. By the investment bank Jefferies’ tally, mergers and acquisitions reached roughly $82 billion, including the two largest foreign acquisitions in the country’s history: Google’s purchase of cybersecurity startup Wiz, and Palo Alto’s acquisition of identity security company CyberArk.

The International Monetary Fund projects economic growth for Israel in 2026 outpacing every G7 economy, all of it achieved through military reserve call-ups, mass displacement, rising security costs, and a war on multiple fronts. Investor confidence on this scale, sustained through years of fighting, is a rare achievement, and the acclaim it receives is deserved.

How did Israel pull it off? The answer rests in part on strong institutions and steady economic management, a central bank and a government that held the macro-economy together under fire. The United States helped Israel absorb some of the war’s direct costs by financing weapons, replenishing interceptors, and reinforcing Israel’s air defenses. What has also helped the economy is something easy to miss: the boom is narrower than it looks. The Bank of Israel estimates the first two years of war have cost some 177 billion shekels, or more than $57 billion in lost output, and the IMF’s latest review put the economy roughly 9% below its prewar trajectory.

The high-tech sector driving the headline numbers is small. It employs only about one in nine Israeli workers, pays them close to three times the average wage in the rest of the economy, and earns most of its revenue from customers abroad, who keep paying when the sirens sound. The other eight out of nine Israeli workers make their living in shops, farms, and one-person businesses that depend on local customers, the ones who stay home and lose a day's income every time the fighting flares up. Those Israelis have borne much of the toll of the war.

Ordinary Israelis and the costs of war

For the ordinary economy, the strain rarely looked like a crash. More than two years into the war that began in Oct. 2023, about half of Israel’s self-employed report earning less than they did before the war, according to a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute. 

Consider Adi Degani, a small business owner, who taught kite surfing at Poleg Beach and on the Sea of Galilee. A reservist, he left his business and answered the call for active military duty during the war, serving for over 400 days, and leaving his business in debt. He took a bank loan to stay afloat and now works in construction. Israel gained enormously from his service, and he carries much of the burden alone.

Resilience is among the traits Israelis prize most, and it may also be the most expensive word in this story. The price it exacts from ordinary Israelis rarely reaches the headlines. A third of Israeli households spend more than they earn, with many in chronic overdraft at rates approaching 13%, and prices run further ahead of what incomes can support than in any other developed economy among the member states of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The banks on the other side of those overdrafts posted record profits through the war.

The toll is not only financial. The State Comptroller of Israel estimates three million out of 10 million Israelis suffer from symptoms of trauma, anxiety, or depression. For a second straight year, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports that more Israelis have left the country than have come home—a quiet outflow seldom counted among the war’s costs. No one chose this the way a commander chooses which missile to intercept. The losses simply settle on whoever stands beneath them, privately, one household at a time.

Even while carrying an extraordinary load—from mobilization and reconstruction to displacement and missile defense—the Israeli government moved to cushion the households closest to the blast. The state paid out billions of shekels compensating businesses and property owners for war damage through the national compensation fund, and the Bank of Israel pressed the country’s banks into a three-billion-shekel relief plan of deferred payments, waived fees, and eased credit. The relief has been real. It has not always been enough. Aid announced in shekels and percentages can still stall out before it reaches the kitchen table.

The limits of self help

Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s civil society has answered on its own terms, and often led the way. What began in Nov. 2023 as a single question posted online became the Forum for Reservists’ Wives, now comprising some 20,000 women speaking for roughly 100,000 families. Its chief executive, Miriam Amedi, came to the cause through her own husband, the singer and Fauda actor Idan Amedi, who was severely wounded in Gaza. 

The Forum has helped secure some 27 billion shekels, about $9 billion, in government support for reservist families across five legislative resolutions, and their advocacy work has resulted in legislation that shields working wives of reservists from dismissal and provides grants for self-employed spouses. Such measures cushion without fully rescuing, and some families still slip through, less a failure than a sign of how much the country has been carrying at once. When the state cannot catch everything, Israelis have long caught one another, and they are doing it again, faster than any policy could.

The grower will plant again next season, because that is what Israelis do, and the hope in that is stubborn. The harder work ahead is quieter and less photogenic. The self-employed reservist, the shuttered business, and the family one mortgage payment from selling the house cannot be left standing on open ground alone.

Israel doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for the war to end before it tends to what the war has cost at home. The borders are still volatile, and the threat from Iran has not passed, but a country that can defend its skies through years of war can also defend the ground its own people stand on. Israel will have to hold both at once. History has rarely granted it the peace to do one before the other.

A man died in a shooting involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday, the latest incident of deadly violence involving federal agents enforcing President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda.

The Department of Homeland Security alleged in a statement Monday evening that around 7:00 a.m., while ICE was conducting surveillance on the last known address of a man who was allegedly in the country illegally, an “illegal alien” left the address in a car. 

ICE agents then tried to stop the vehicle, and when the car attempted to flee, “fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.” DHS’ statement added that emergency services were contacted immediately and that Biddeford police and the FBI responded to the scene. The driver died from his injuries.

Speaker of Maine’s House of Representatives Ryan Fecteau wrote in a Facebook post about the shooting and ICE’s involvement. “State Police and the Department of Public Safety are now on scene to gather details and would expect the FBI to investigate as well.”

The individual was identified by local advocacy groups as a 26-year-old Colombian man who “came to Maine to live and work,” according to a joint statement by the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine. The statement, released Monday afternoon, said that the man was authorized to work in the United States and had been issued a Social Security Number. TIME has not independently verified this information.

Speaking to CNN, Sen. Angus King (I, Maine) said that the person DHS was targeting was not the same as the person who died, referring to a conversation he had with Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin. King earlier said Mullin told him the casualty was the intended target of a warrant, who had been “ordered to leave the country” and had “weaponized the vehicle.” The Independent senator also said that the officers involved were “apparently” not wearing any body cameras at the time.

The Associated Press reported that Monday’s shooting is the ninth ICE-related fatality since Trump returned to the White House.

“I know that situations like these are alarming and frightening,” Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, wrote in a statement released just before noon. “The Maine State Police are at the scene supporting and working cooperatively with the Attorney General’s Office, Maine’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner, and Federal officials to determine the facts of what occurred this morning.”

The Biddeford Police Department (BPD) has yet to make an official statement. Police Chief JoAnne Fisk said that further information would come from the FBI and Maine Attorney General's Office, and the BPD did not reply to TIME’s request for comment.

Biddeford’s local paper, the Biddeford Gazette, reported that an eyewitness saw flashing lights on an unmarked Ford Explorer at an intersection just before 7:20 a.m. The witness told the Gazette that he saw at least two officers surround a white sedan, yelling very loudly, before he heard at least four gunshots. 

Another witness spoke to the Portland Press Herald, saying he had heard gunshots and rushed to the window in time to see officers pulling a man from his vehicle. 

“He was bleeding profusely from the head,” Daniel Boucher told the news outlet. “He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop.'”

Boucher said that he believed he watched the man die on the street.

Local media reported that authorities closed a road following the shooting, and that the crime scene was monitored by Maine State Police, the Biddeford Police Crime Scene Unit, and the FBI.

Project Relief Maine, a racial justice and immigration advocacy group operating in the state, said on social media that one of their “community members was killed during an encounter with ICE.”

“We are in contact with the family and are committed to supporting them during this unimaginable time,” Project Relief said in the statement. “This was a young person whose life was cut short, and our community must come together to stand with their loved ones and ensure they are not alone. They must get justice.”

Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree said in a video posted to social media that she was “deeply disturbed” by the reports.

“Were they pursuing someone with a criminal record? Was this a random traffic stop? How did this possibly happen and why was this person shot? Were the officers wearing body cameras?” she wrote. “But more than anything else, I want to know 'why are you in Maine?'”

Pingree, a Democrat, has been outspoken as ICE has heavily increased its presence and activity in Maine in recent weeks. MIRC reported about a 35% uptick in hotline calls about ICE sightings and detentions in May and June, as compared to April.

The incident comes less than a week after an ICE officer fatally shot a man, 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, while conducting a traffic stop in Houston, Texas. DHS said that Araujo rammed into an ICE vehicle while attempting to evade an arrest and that the officer fired his weapon in self-defense. There were three men in the car with Araujo at the time who contradict that scenario, according to their lawyer. Araujo’s family and community members have demanded an investigation into his death.

Read More: What We Know About the Fatal ICE Shooting in Houston

ICE’s use of force against civilians continues to come under heavy scrutiny following the killings of two people during ICE’s immigration crackdown earlier this year in Minneapolis. Alex Pretti and Renee Good’s deaths sparked outrage across the country and led to mass protests in Minneapolis. 

Mullin, who replaced Kristi Noem at the helm of DHS in March, had pledged to run operations more discreetly than his predecessor had. But ICE has not managed to stay out of the headlines, and The New York Times reported a surge in arrests, with federal immigration officials arresting 10,000 people in a five-day period earlier this month. TIME has reached out to DHS for comment.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who ran in the Democratic primary for governor and is currently pursuing Graham Platner's former seat in the Senate, also commented on the shooting on Monday. "It's time to get ICE off our streets," she wrote on X.

"Our communities are hurting," MIRC Executive Director Mufalo Chitam said in the organization's joint press release with Presente! “We are grieving, we are furious, and we will not allow his death to be treated as routine or inevitable. How much more harm must our communities endure before those with the power to act acknowledge that this has gone too far?”

—Chad de Guzman contributed reporting.