by Francesco Battistini
6,000 bombs fell every 30 seconds, but escape from the Strip became impossible
FROM OUR GUEST
NIRIM (Gaza border) our duty to praise the Lord who has not given us our portion like theirs!…. The earth shakes at sunset. A Qassam rocket rains down on the greenhouses, which were quickly abandoned by Thai workers. The 155mm guns tower into the sky over Gaza. Prepare for war. In the dust of a dirt intersection on Road 234, two kilometers from the olive trees where hundreds of rave kids died, ten soldiers plant four sticks and a blue tarp. Two are in uniform and not patrolling anywhere, M-16s over their shoulders. One is holding a guitar that looks like a machine gun. The others sway back and forth, the tefillin firm and firm: …it is our duty to praise the Lord / our destiny, not to worship vanity… They are the reserves. Bearded or clean-shaven, with or without headbands, nerd glasses. The boys who came from America, from India, from Europe to prepare the Great Revenge.
Gaza over there and you sing to the Lord as you look at it. Swing, pray, shoot: one gave up his career as a manager in California, the other spent his honeymoon in Greece, the third went to university in Paris. 360,000 remembered: I live in Frankfurt – Menachem K., 29 years old, security expert, offers water – I received the postcard a month ago, when no one could imagine a crazy war like this. At the end of October I had planned an “illegal vacation” in Naples, three days full of alcohol and excess. I don’t care: I’ll go back to my duty. None of us are hiding.
Everyone is shaking. Besiegers and besieged. I’m waiting to enter the strip and desperate to leave. Even in Gaza they pray: “Today I pray to find water for my seven children,” said an old friend on the phone in fear. There is none and you can’t even fish from the wells: you need gasoline for the pumps, which is also running out. There is a thirst and the attacks on bottles in supermarkets begin: the Hamas guards have taken off their uniforms to avoid being seen by Israeli drones and are now fending off the looters as best they can. You also start to feel hungry: without electricity, the ovens no longer bake bread. Six thousand bombs fell, four thousand tons of lead, one every thirty seconds. And there is no way to bury the bodies, now there are more than 1,400, more than those of the killed Israelis: a large mass grave was dug, a bulldozer quickly covered it with earth, and there was not even a sign of death for the mourners planted.
You sleep better on the street or in deserted areas than in high-rise buildings. A full cell phone battery is worth 400 shekels, or one hundred euros. Escape via the tunnel is priceless because it is now impossible: Hamas has said no to a humanitarian corridor to Egypt via the Rafah border crossing. You know we would all run away. This is how Radio Al Aqsa carries out propaganda: “We must stay and die as martyrs!” … But we don’t care about the Israeli hostages or their end: we only care about water and saving ourselves.
Around Gaza it is no longer a no-man’s land, not yet a no-man’s land: they have removed the bodies of terrorists from the olive groves and the cars destroyed in Saturday’s massacre, but on the sixth day we can go no further. By afternoon, an operation was underway: there were 1,200 Hamas men, one for every Israeli killed, and not all of them were killed, pushed back or captured. They have invaded again!, a sergeant runs and waves at the Reim checkpoint. Back back. The little media armada is being driven back to the gas station, not away from here, dangerous, we just caught one!…. He was in his underwear, hiding in a clump of trees, with no weapon.
The enemy was still at the gates, sometimes never leaving. The Sheba and Ichilov hospitals in Tel Aviv refuse to treat the wounded terrorists: they have stationed them in the same wards where the victims and the police must protect them from the family members they want to lynch. This is no respect for the pain! they protest, especially now when the fallen are being buried and half the country stops to listen to a widow’s poignant speech on live television: “When you didn’t receive my calls – the echo in.” the cemetery of Mount Herzl – I knew that you were fighting with all your might…. The mourning is short, the war is urgent. And there is little reason to cry, says Ohad Roimi, 40 years old, as he guards the half-abandoned kibbutz of Nekba on the way to the Strip: life goes on. Even if people have run away and no one is here anymore.
Hamas or not, there are three thousand cows that need to be milked three times a day. The farms are being organized, write to [email protected] and someone will send you: We have found about twenty refugees from Darfur. They stay in the kibbutz, they are not afraid. They milk the milk. And they feel useful.
October 13, 2023 (modified October 13, 2023 | 08:00)
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