Nothing seems to be able to break the crystalline calm of Ofakim. This great city, lost in the hills of the Negev Desert, halfway between Israel and the Gaza Strip, wakes up on the morning of Saturday, October 7th, on the Shabbat of the religious festival of Sukkot, where we reunite with the family after a week of the festivities – except for Eliakim Cohen, a sporty young man whose pointed chin is accentuated by a goatee, all alone in his apartment overlooking a small street.
Suddenly, at 6:30 a.m., the sirens broke the silence with their wail. They announce a barrage of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip – a routine of war used by all residents of the enclave’s surroundings, who know by heart when to rush to the nearest shelter. nearby, one of the countless cement blocks scattered throughout southern Israel. Mr. Cohen has a place next to his house. However, he decides to stay at home.
What’s the point of going out? Iron Dome, Israel’s air defense system, intercepts about 90% of rockets flying from Gaza. But this morning the sirens wailed for a long time, almost fifteen minutes. Silence returns until shots are heard. “I saw four people arrive, armed, with uniforms similar to those of the IDF,” says the young man, filming with his smartphone between the shutters of his blinds. Did he notice that the green of their work clothes was less dark than usual, that they wore no boots or helmets and were armed with Kalashnikovs? But why worry when Gaza is more than twenty kilometers away as the crow flies, demonstrations on the border with Israel stopped a week earlier and the area is considered one of the most heavily monitored areas in the world?
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“Two or three civilians, people from the neighborhood, come towards them. “They’re depressed,” describes Mr. Cohen. The fighters are still advancing. Hiding behind a garbage can, a plainclothes policeman, who came out with a pistol in his hand to find out the origin of the shots, waves his cap towards the armed men and shouts to them: “Police, police.” » The soldiers approach calmly, The guns are pointed at the ground when one of them shoots the agent, who is immediately knocked down. “He thought they were IDF soldiers. And I believed it too,” Mr. Cohen continues. The shooter grabs the police officer’s gun and realizes that he is being watched through the shutters. He just as calmly fires at Eliakim, who is hiding in the back of his room.
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