A year after Hamas attack destroyed this Israeli community, returning home still seems impossible

Steinbrecher, 65, last saw his daughter in a Hamas propaganda video. Doron’s skin was pale and his voice weak.

“Without Doron, it’s still October 7,” his mother said. “And we’re not going home until she’s home.”

Hostage families and many residents of southern communities are boycotting the ceremony organized by the government to commemorate October 7. For them, until the government brings the hostages home and refuses to investigate and take responsibility for its mistakes, it will have blood on its hands. Instead, residents of Kfar Aza will hold a small tribute and lower the kibbutz flag to half-mast.

Residents said they had nothing but admiration for the troops who fought that day. But they are furious with the military’s top brass, blaming them for a command structure that collapsed when the kibbutz needed it most.

When she recounts that day, Eilon is seized with fury and astonishment: more than 35 hours of horror endured by her family and the army’s response.

When the sirens began to sound that Saturday morning, Eilon thought it would take a few minutes for the army to arrive, she told the AP as she toured the bullet-riddled remains of her home .

It took hours.

His family rushed to their safe. A son and daughter closed the door against the armed men who tried to enter. The granddaughters, Gali and Mika, were hiding under the bed. Eilon received a message that Tal had gone to fight.

The five men gathered in the vault, hearing the screams and gunshots of the attackers, unsure whether Tal was dead or alive. Israeli troops eventually took control of their home, and Eilon said he saw how scared and confused the young soldiers seemed.

Gali shared with them desperate text messages from her kibbutz friends who were trying to escape the rampage.

“At the age of 15, she became a commander of an elite IDF unit,” Eilon said, using the Israeli army acronym.

However, the troops did not evacuate the family. It was not until Sunday afternoon, when the militants were again hiding in the house, that the soldiers chased them away.

As she ran through her garden, Eilon saw a tank swing its cannon towards her house. He fired, collapsing his house on the activists inside.

Shortly after being rescued, Eilon learned that Tal was dead.

“I knew it all along,” she said. “But part of me hoped he was injured, that he was unconscious in a hospital.”

With the battle still raging, some residents were evacuated earlier than expected and fled in military jeeps. Hanan Dann, a young father, said he encountered a group of soldiers at a gas station just outside the kibbutz, who appeared to be waiting for orders.

“I wanted to say that there is still fighting inside, that there are people dying,” he said. “They could have saved them.”

Soldiers and militants fought in Kfar Aza for days. By the end, the militants had killed 64 civilians and 22 soldiers and dragged 19 hostages to Gaza.

Nearby, in the recesses of the Negev desert, stands a decrepit water tower. It is a remnant of Be’erot Yitzhak, a kibbutz abandoned after a deadly Egyptian attack in 1948, during the war that led to the creation of Israel.

“Will this be what Kfar Aza will look like in 10 years? » Dann asked. “Just a stop on the highway that I can point out to my kids? »

Even those who want to re-inhabit it know that Kfar Aza will never be the same again.

Shpack, the Civil Guard member, said he understood why no one would bring a child here now, pointing to the border fence. Every few minutes, an Israeli warplane drops a bomb on Gaza, breaking the silence of the kibbutz with a loud boom.

“And even after the bombs are gone, how can you raise it here?” Shpack asked. “How do you explain what happened here?”

For some, the fate of the kibbutz is linked to Gaza.

Some want Israel to take a hard line in the future.

Marcus Scharfstein, 29, who lives on the kibbutz, said he would not feel completely safe until Israel re-establishes Jewish settlements in Gaza. Israel unilaterally withdrew its soldiers and some 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005.

“If I know that in Gaza right now there are 10 to 20 Jewish villages,” he said, “I will feel in control again,” adding that he did not feel that way before the attack of October 7.

But others say that until there is a peace deal with the Palestinians, they will be on the front lines again on another October 7. Some Palestinians from Gaza once lived in these same arid areas of what is now southern Israel. Almost no trace remains of their villages after Israeli troops drove them out during the 1948 war.

“We have tried war enough times and it has never resulted in anything good,” Eilon said. She wants a new government that will discuss with the Palestinians to find “an arrangement allowing us to live together on the same land”.

“I dream for the day of an open fence from here to the sea, with two people living together.”

___

Find more coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/mideast-wars