Fire marks and bullet holes are in the destroyed walls of the Haran family home on kibbutz Be’eri. Its roof collapsed, windows were broken, scattering shards of terracotta and glass across the floor – the still untouched wreckage of a day of horror for Israel.
“This house tells the story of Be’eri,” says Yarden Tzemach, a farmer and surviving resident of the kibbutz, one of the Israeli communities near Gaza that were overrun by Hamas militants last year.
“In this house, people were murdered. A family, including three children, was kidnapped from here,” he says.
Outside, under the fruit trees in the backyard, a children’s toy car, adorned with Winnie the Pooh stickers, rests amid the rubble, a stark reminder of the lives destroyed there.
In some neighborhoods in Be’eri, there was barely a building left intact. More than 100 of its 1,100 residents were killed and another 30 kidnapped and taken to Gaza on October 7 last year.
House after house was burned or reduced to rubble, and – a year later – many remain poignant monuments to ongoing trauma. At least 10 kibbutz residents, all friends and neighbors, are among more than 100 Israelis believed to still be being held hostage.
Progress on a ceasefire and an agreement to release the hostages between Israel and Hamas has repeatedly collapsed, to the anger and despair of the hostages’ families.
“The best recovery is to return home”
In Be’eri’s main administration building, two large aerial photographs hang side by side near the entrance.
One is an image of the kibbutz from April 2023, showing neat rows of neat, white buildings amid lush gardens. The other, taken shortly after the October 7 attack, shows the same houses darkened and destroyed by the militants’ onslaught.
“They killed my sister there,” says Amit Solvy, pointing to a house on the map, five rows from the fence surrounding the kibbutz.
In another part of the administrative building, two posters are taped to a window – one showing the names and faces of kibbutz residents who were killed and another listing those being held hostage.
Solvy, Be’eri’s financial chairman, himself an Israeli veteran of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, is one of about 100 residents who have already returned. Despite his personal loss, he returned to his home three months ago and is now helping lead efforts to bring kibbutz Be’eri, formerly a self-sustaining farming community, back to life.
“I told everyone that the best recovery is to go home. This is the best emotional recovery, in my opinion,” says Solvy.
But he acknowledges that not everyone feels the same, estimating that up to 15% of Be’eri’s surviving residents may never return because of the trauma and memories of October 7, 2023.
And many of those who want to return, he says, can’t do so until extensive damage is repaired and homes rebuilt — a massive renovation project that Solvy says will take at least two years before most residents can return to their homes. home.
“There is no infrastructure for children, there are no schools, so people with families cannot return yet,” he explains.
“There were terrorists in my house”
Work on the physical scars has already begun, with heavy machinery breaking ground in a new Be’eri neighborhood. New homes, untouched by the Oct. 7 attack, are seen as an essential means of attracting most residents back.
Ayelet Hakim, her husband and their children, ages 12 and 5, live along with many other Be’eri survivors in government-provided temporary housing on another kibbutz, Hatzerim, an hour’s drive from the terrifying memories of home. .
“It’s a trauma, the idea of returning to live in a house that brutal terrorists invaded,” Ayelet tells CNN while preparing dinner in your new kitchen.
“I stayed in my safe room for hours and hours not knowing what was happening, feeling my life threatened, my children’s lives threatened, because there were terrorists in my house,” she adds.
His son, Yehonatan, interrupts. “I want to go back to Be’eri, back to the house where I was living. I don’t care about the trauma,” he pleads.
“Not the house. The kibbutz, yes”, says Ayelet. “Kibbutz Be’eri has been my home for the last 56 years. That’s where I want to live,” she says.
But after so much death and destruction in Be’eri, a community so close to Gaza, much still needs to be done to reassure residents that they will be safe.
In July, an internal Israel Defense Forces investigation into the events of October 7, 2023 concluded that the Israeli army “failed in its mission to protect residents” and was unprepared for the mass attack by Hamas.
“I believe it will be possible. But it will be a big challenge and it will take a long time for people to feel as safe as they did before October 7th,” says Tzemach, back in the ruins of his neighborhood in Be’eri.
“You know, once something happens, you always have in the back of your mind that it could happen again.”
This content was originally published in Survivors of kibbutz Be’eri, symbol of Hamas’ brutality, want to return on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.
