‘This Is Where I Want to Be’

When Ayelet Khon moved again to the Kfar Azza kibbutz together with her husband two months after the brutal Hamas-led assault of Oct. 7, the very first thing she did was cling a string of rainbow-colored lights up on the entrance patio.

At night time, when darkness drenches this group, the twinkling colours are the one lights seen.

“We’re going to preserve these lights on and by no means flip them off — even when we’re out for the night — they’re lights of hope,” Ms. Khon stated she instructed her husband, Shar Shnurman.

Eight hundred folks used to reside right here, together with households with youngsters who scampered about within the evenings. Everybody who survived the assault was evacuated on Oct. 8. Since then, their properties have been darkish. Even the streetlamps are gone, mowed down when tanks plowed via the slender lanes because the Israeli military arrived to defend in opposition to the attackers.

Ms. Khon, 56, and Mr. Shnurman, 62, are the one residents who’ve returned thus far. At night time, the silence is eerie, punctured episodically by the thunderous sound of bombs exploding in Gaza.

Some folks might imagine they’re loopy, coming again right here, simply the 2 of them, Mr. Shnurman stated. However to him, coming house was pure.

“We got here again for probably the most primary motive: That is our house,” stated Mr. Shnurman, a gregarious big of a person. “That is the place I wish to be. It’s probably the most logical factor, to wish to be house.”

He nonetheless thinks of this spot, a stone’s throw from Gaza, as a chunk of paradise, or, because the locals who lived beneath the specter of missiles for years put it, “99 % heaven, 1 % hell.” Half of the properties had been broken within the assault, however nature has continued on its merry means. The swordlike leaves on the squat palm timber put on the brilliant inexperienced sheen of the desert winter, and thick bougainvillea vines that cling to homes spill purple flowers all about.

It’s a communal settlement with no group. The eating corridor that served scorching lunch each day is closed, and the overall retailer is shuttered. There isn’t any mail, and there are not any on-line deliveries. To purchase groceries, you could depart the kibbutz. Ms. Khon, an acupuncturist and therapeutic massage therapist, can’t work; her shopper base was the kibbutz, and nobody is round.

About 200,000 Israelis had been evacuated after Oct. 7 from cities and farming communities like Kfar Azza that abut the Gaza Strip and had been hit arduous through the assault, and from villages close to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, the place shelling by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah intensified on the similar time.

The federal government has put displaced residents up in lodges and is footing the invoice for his or her meals. However extended evacuations of this scale have by no means occurred earlier than in Israel, and with the struggle now getting into its fifth month, the unstated query on everybody’s thoughts is whether or not anybody who lived close to Gaza will ever really feel it’s protected sufficient to return.

Some displaced residents from Kfar Azza stated it was untimely to even take into account returning earlier than the federal government authorised resettlement in cities inside 2.5 miles of the border with Gaza, the place the Israeli military has been waging a struggle to destroy Hamas. Mr. Shnurman and Ms. Khon didn’t ask for permission to return, though the military’s regional Gaza division has stated that residents concerned with returning have the choice of doing so, in line with a army spokesman.

Greater than 60 Kfar Azza residents had been among the many roughly 1,200 folks in Israel who had been murdered on Oct. 7, and a few 18 males, girls and kids from the kibbutz had been among the many roughly 240 who had been kidnapped. Hamas remains to be holding 5 hostages from the kibbutz.

“We’re not going house till the hostages are again house,” stated Ronit Ifergen, 49, a mom of three from Kfar Azza.

So Ms. Khon and Mr. Shnurman, who hasn’t resumed his manufacturing unit job but, spend their days taking part in what has develop into a well-liked pastime in Israel: cooking for troops within the space who’ve heard about his barbecue and her banana bread by phrase of mouth.

They’re by no means totally alone. Kibbutz members who do their army reserve responsibility on-site cease in for decent goulash, and journalists and others frequently come to see the devastation with their very own eyes — the charred row of homes the place the younger adults lived, the bullet holes in kitchen cupboards, the upended mattress beneath which Doron Steinbrecher was hiding when she was kidnapped.

Pictures present Ms. Steinbrecher together with her lengthy blonde hair pulled again, smiling for the digital camera, sporting a shiny gown for an evening in town. She remains to be being held hostage in Gaza, and appeared gaunt and fearful in a video launched on Jan. 26 by her Hamas captors.

Ms. Khon was having her morning espresso on the patio on Oct. 7 when she heard a barrage of missiles that turned the sky overhead a chalky white. The noise was so loud that Mr. Shnurman thought a helicopter had landed on their home.

They checked on their next-door neighbor, whose husband was away, after which hunkered down of their bed room that doubles as a protected room. Twenty minutes later, the neighbor’s husband referred to as and stated he couldn’t attain her. May they examine in on her once more?

“Shar went over, and when he acquired again, he instructed me, ‘They murdered Mira,’” Ms. Khon stated. “I stated, ‘That’s not humorous.’ And he stated, ‘I’m not joking.’”

The couple assume the one motive they survived is as a result of their unit and the neighbor’s unit are hooked up, and the terrorists should not have identified there was one other household within the complicated.

“I spotted then, we’re in a battle for our lives right here,” Mr. Shnurman stated. “There was a struggle occurring exterior our window. And the place was the military?”

It took 30 hours till Israeli troopers rescued them from their protected room, the place that they had no meals, water or electrical energy. They stored their voices down whereas listening to the sounds of gunfire and shouting in Arabic exterior. Once they emerged, they noticed our bodies and bullet casings all around the kibbutz, and the air was full of the stench of blood and burned properties.

Like everybody else, the couple had been evacuated to a resort north of Tel Aviv. However they didn’t know what to do with themselves there. They love cooking and feeding folks, and so they didn’t actually have a fridge. So on Dec. 10, the fourth night time of Hanukkah, they moved again to their snippet of paradise.

Mr. Shnurman goes for a stroll each morning. “Each day I cross the homes of the useless, and each morning, I cry over again,” he stated. “After which I come house, and I do know: That is the precise place to be.”

Different residents can’t bear the considered returning. “My mom visited simply as soon as, and she or he hugged me and burst out crying, and stated, ‘I’m scared to loss of life simply being right here,’” Ms Khon recalled. “For me, it was the alternative. The will to go house was larger than the worry.”

Coming again to the kibbutz meant that life gained, Mr. Shnurman stated. “We beat the loss of life that knocked on our door,” he stated.

“Our energy as Jews is that after the Holocaust, we didn’t say, ‘No truthful.’ We pulled ourselves up and constructed a rustic,” Ms. Khon stated. “We beat Hamas by coming again right here. They got here and stated, ‘We’ll uproot you,’ however they failed. We got here again to our house. Our victory is that we’re staying right here.”