“Fuck you, Palestine.” The graffiti appears on several walls in the Mishor Hagefen neighborhood of Ofakim, 22 days after Hamas caused the deaths of 53 residents in this town of about 30,000. The hatred and outrage remain concentrated and activity on the streets is at half speed, although the Israeli government has not ordered their evacuation, unlike other places attacked. “We need more guns, more security,” complains Nadav Wakni, 22, an employee at a Mexican fast food restaurant who says he narrowly escaped the shooting. His application is supported with the support of several of his neighbors. A few meters from where the young man shows the impact of the bullets he escaped, there is a small altar on a wall with candles, a police hat, a stuffed animal and a canvas with a photo. It is that of agent Ronnie Abohern, one of those who gave their lives defending the city.
In the sky you can constantly see the planes that are constantly bombing neighboring Gaza and whose detonations at times become the soundtrack of Ofakim. The city in southern Israel is 25 kilometers as the crow flies from the Palestinian enclave where more than 8,000 people have died in retaliation for the Hamas attack. According to the Israeli authorities, Ofakim is the furthest point in the Gaza Strip from the thirty locations that the fundamentalists were able to attack on the 7th, with the death toll reaching 1,400.
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The city is slowly waking up from the nightmare, because for many what happened that day still seems like “a movie”, like Patricia Caro, a 66-year-old Argentine who came to Israel 33 years ago and returned there, says her job a few days ago. in an electronic components factory. “At first we didn’t know if they were children playing in the street, until we realized they were terrorists,” Caro remembers.
Young Nadav Wakni remembers the years he lived in Los Angeles. “If this were the United States, we would have all kinds of weapons,” he says. He lives in a three-story block whose walls are spray-painted in favor of Israel and against “terrorists.” The house directly opposite is that of the couple Rachel and David Edry. Dozens of shots explain the fight that took place in the house where five Hamas members barricaded themselves with the couple for 15 hours. The place is a coming and going of neighbors who watch, pause, talk… Something like a place of pilgrimage.
Ofakim House, where five Hamas attackers stayed for 15 hours along with the couple who owned it, Rachel and David Edry. Luis de Vega
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Considered a national hero, Rachel managed to entertain the militiamen with cookies, conversation and songs and stay alive until several police officers and armed civilians arrived to rescue her. Miraculously, the five attackers were killed and the couple were rescued alive. One of those who died in this operation is the aforementioned Agent Ronnie Abohern. This Sunday, several people take out furniture, all kinds of belongings, the television… they even tear down the window frames to erase this unfortunate day from the house.
The streets of the Mishor Hagefen district, a refuge from the horrors experienced, are littered with more canvases with the faces of the fallen. There were also death notices and traces of blood on the door of the shelters where the attackers finished off some of the neighbors who were trying to get to safety. Liran Pérez, a 38-year-old engineer by profession, is one of the more than 300,000 reservists recaptured after October 7. He is deployed with other soldiers in Ofakim. As the son of Moroccan immigrants who “arrived in the promised land in the 1960s to build a new life for themselves,” Pérez knows that “there will be no normal life for months” in the city. “Those neighbors across the street left us the keys before we left in case we had to go in the house to shower,” he says, surrounded by some of his colleagues.
In fact, the rhythm of life is recovering in fits and starts, and shops, companies and factories producing essential products are gradually reopening. Public transport is also running, but the education system remains frozen, although activities are being organized for children, explains a community spokesman. This is not the case in Sderot, the town just a kilometer from Gaza that was evacuated, or in the kibbutzim (agricultural cooperatives) that surround the strip, which was badly hit and is now a closed military zone from where from the army undertook the land invasion. These agricultural communities, where destruction reigns and the trail of death is still present, cannot even bury their dead neighbors. For security reasons, they are currently doing this temporarily in cemeteries far from the Palestinian enclave.
Anti-Palestinian graffiti in a neighborhood of Ofakim where 53 residents died in the Hamas attack. Luis de Vega
As a healing therapy, Ofakim City Council is offering residents the opportunity to stay in a hotel far from their home for a week. According to community information, around 10,000 people have already taken advantage of this program. Rachel Marciano, 85 years old and mother of 10 children born between her native Morocco and Israel, is one of those who realizes she’s not going anywhere, even though she lives alone. This woman, who came to Israel with her husband from Tetouan in 1963 “when there was nothing in Ofakim,” moves slowly down the street, leaning on her walker, as planes fly by. After three weeks, the shock caused by the attacks in Gaza is no longer overwhelming. “I’m not afraid, although sometimes they get to your heart,” he says, running his hand over his chest.
His eyes fill with tears as he remembers October 7, when he didn’t leave his house, about 300 meters from where militiamen killed dozens of neighbors. “They killed a lot of people. Some children were cut into pieces. Oh, what a shame,” he laments in perfect Spanish, revealing the Andalusian accent he inherited from the years of the protectorate in the north of the Alawite kingdom. “The Moros are very bad,” he concludes, referring to the Hamas attackers.
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