For 15 hours, Inbal Reich Alon was locked in a shelter while Hamas gunmen killed and kidnapped dozens of Israelis near her home on the edge of the Gaza Strip.
Alon managed to escape and is now a refugee, like about 150 other residents of Kibbutz Beeri, in southern Israel, in a hotel on the shores of the Dead Sea.
This 58-year-old woman remembers hearing explosions on Saturday morning, instead of imagining the massive Hamas offensive that killed hundreds of Israelis, including many residents of the same region as her, and which she thought was a storm.
But Alon soon realized that her small, close-knit community was under attack, causing her and her family to take refuge in a comfortable, safe place in her home, originally designed to protect residents from missile launches.
The building was set on fire by the attackers.
“We had no idea what was happening,” described Alon in statements to the French news agency, adding that he heard shouts in Arabic.
For hours, the man and the children did not release the latch of the shelter door, which does not lock, as is usual in these types of structures.
Temporarily housed at the David Hotel, more than 90 miles from home, Reich Alon now believes she survived thanks to a simple matter of luck.
The fate of many other communities along the Gaza Strip border remains uncertain.
On Monday morning, army spokesman Daniel Hagari reported that about 70 terrorists had infiltrated the Beeri Kibbutz and that most of them had been killed by Israeli authorities.
Within hours, the ground floor of the hotel was filled with donations of clothing, toys, food and hygiene products.
“We arrived here with what we had, some of us were barefoot”Reich Alon explained.
Mental health professionals, all volunteers, provided support to those housed.
‘We are in the safest possible place’said Alon Pauker, a historian based in the Gaza border area, as he looked out over the Dead Sea.
“It’s a September 11-type tragedy,” the 57-year-old academic said.
“We must understand that we no longer have the ‘kibbutz’ we had and we no longer have the land we had. It is a tectonic shift,” added Pauker, for whom the responsibility for the war also lies with Israeli leaders and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who “failed the country.”
“The army did not defend the civilians,” Pauker said, accusing the army of “being busy with other things” in the occupied West Bank, including supporting far-right government policies that encourage settlements – Israeli communities are illegal under international law.
Reich Alon believes the kibbutz attackers “knew what they were doing,” while Israel has dismissed a potential threat from Hamas for years.
The movement of Israeli kibbutz residents, which preceded Israel’s founding in 1948, has its roots in socialism and is still traditionally associated with the left.
Now the people of Beeri support a war against Gaza to rid the country of Hamas.
“We are dealing with a terrorist organization that has unnecessarily murdered children,” says Pauker.
Authorities say more than 900 people have been killed in Israel since the offensive began on Saturday.
On the Palestinian side, 687 people have been killed, according to local authorities.
This Tuesday, Israel announced that it has found approximately 1,500 bodies of Hamas fighters on its territory.
Source: DN
