The Israeli military eased certain safety restrictions for civilians in the north of the country late on Saturday, in a move which indicates that it does not expect any immediate attack from Iran or its proxies in the region.

The decision came after a “situational assessment”, the IDF said in a statement, which gave no mention of Israel’s bombing of several military sites in Iran in the early hours of Saturday, carried out in retaliation for Iran’s ballistic missile attack this month.

As long as they have bomb shelters nearby, schools are now able to re-open in the parts of Israel which are closest to the border with Lebanon, where Iran’s terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, has been targeting with heavy barrages of rockets for months.

Gatherings of up to 2,000 people are now permitted in towns a bit further away from the border, nearer to the port of Haifa.

Restrictions on the home front have been tightened and eased over the past year, depending on an evolving assessment of threat by the Israeli military.

Following Israel’s attacks on military sites in Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan and Shiraz early Saturday, the US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said that Iran should not escalate the conflict by responding, and that Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes should mark an end to the exchange.