A foggy afternoon on the edge of Arad. On a bench on the boardwalk, a young man machine-shaves an older man's head. "It's not that easy to be bald, with nothing," he declares. On the opposite ridge, someone placed the gate of a destroyed church in Vienna, and some children playing soccer next to it. Pepper tree branches hide the road junction signs. Left to Masada, straight to the hidden evacuees hotel.
After Black Sabbath, residents of the western Negev cities left, fled or evacuated their homes in great chaos. Most of them are private entrepreneurship, some are directed by welfare departments. For three weeks now, they have been moving, often without direction, between different hotels. A man and a woman for their souls and their families. We walk to the hotel on the edge of Arad, which has received 300 evacuees from Sderot and Ashkelon. The numbers change every hour, as some of the evacuees migrate on, some return home, not always announcing where.
The lobby of the Roxon Hotel looks new from the nylons, full of children's screams. Around them are mothers and fathers with an urgent and urgent evacuation story. For each and every one of them, the details are a little different, but the story is shared by all of them, written in their features, in their gaping gaze in continuous disbelief, in the corners of their mouths that allow no more than the tip of a cracked smile, in the shrinking eyebrows that range from frozen shock to total rage.
"My whole family is wandering, broken up. Some in Eilat, the Dead Sea and here," says G. from Ashkelon. "We had to fight to be evacuated for a week. Why do you think we don't want to be photographed? The municipality dictated to us. That's how they stuck us in an unprepared hotel, until Monday, and that was it. They didn't let us go with our family like the residents of Sderot and the kibbutzim. Not that I'm saying they don't deserve it, certainly after what they've been through, but why don't they all get the same thing? And why only a week? My whole neighborhood is without safe rooms and no defense, missiles all day, and on Monday I return from despair here straight to the inferno."
"The hotel was supposed to open only in January," says Idan Lavi at the reception, "but there was a need, so we did what we could and organized everything we could to take in the evacuees. It's not easy for them, some came here with welfare referrals, single-parent families or parents of children with autism. It's not easy, but you do what you can. They take care of their food, things they can, try to bring them activities, but it's hard. Here, now a magician has come out of here. I hope he succeeded."
G.: "It's not that we're not grateful that we got the hotel. On the one hand anything is better than staying in an inferno, but this hotel is not really ready to absorb people. There are problems with the food and the laundry. We go crazy that there's nothing we can do here, and the kids get even more bored. I've been living for a week on hot dish, Bamba, cigarettes and black coffee. Some of my family stayed in Ashkelon, some fled to Tel Aviv, to friends in the north. I'm consumed with worries for those there and I'm eating myself for being here, and the worst thing is that no one talks to you, doesn't tell you anything, doesn't tell you anything."
Three weeks no official has spoken to you?
"Want to know what the only message they've sent us since we've been here?" says A. from Sderot, pulling out a piece of paper and reading: "'Due to the situation, the rooms in the hotel will be cleaned and towels will be changed only once every three days.' That's all they have to tell us."
G. erupts: "There are no caregivers here, no resilience, no social workers and no one here has an answer. The only thing the Arad municipality can give us is to put the children in frameworks. I came here to take care of my children after the trauma they went through, so now I'm going to put them in frames? If I don't see them, I panic. Twice we were betrayed – the state betrayed us, leaving us to deal with this disaster alone, without any assistance or anyone to show that he cares. Someone to come and talk to us - nothing. That's how we are, displaced and that's it. No country, deal with it. And the second betrayal is that of Bibi, who betrayed us by selling us to Hamas. I'm not ashamed to say let everyone know! And I still voted for him."
"No, no. Enough, we're done, there's no point in talking about him, there's no Bibi anymore," says A. "In the last elections I didn't vote for him, because I understood he wasn't doing anything, I voted for Ben-Gvir. We wanted governance – we got a TikTok minister."
What solution do you see to the situation?
R. Sderot: "Occupy Gaza and establish a settlement there called Nova. It has a price, but which is better? That in the next round Hamas will kill another 2,000 civilians? Do you know how lucky the residents of Sderot were when the terrorists entered the police station and did not massacre the neighborhoods? If the state doesn't have a permanent solution for the day after, let them not carry out this operation. If I go back to Sderot and there's another round, the situation hasn't been resolved and Sderot won't have a future."
Childhood loss
From the beginning of the conversation, A sits on the sidelines, shifting uncomfortably in the chair. Tall, bright eyes, bright baby face and smooth, flowing hair. In any other universe, model agents would chase her deep into Gaza to offer her a contract to pose for joyful youth on billboards. But something in her gaze conveys unresolved distress and pain, things in the room swirling around her until they accumulate into a critical mass, and the words emerge from her like a volcano eruption.
The road to the Roxon Hotel, photo: David Peretz
"I can't hear it anymore. I'm just turning 16, and I haven't felt protected my whole life. Every car or plane that passes is a harpoon, I'm not focused, I'm always just looking to do something with myself. I don't know where I am, and the worst thing is that in two weeks I'll be back home again and I'll continue to be on tranquilizers, and I'll be back in a resilience center all day. I don't understand why all my life, in my country, I don't feel safe. Why in my country do we have to flee in every round, to be refugees? Is there such a thing at all? Being a refugee within your own country?
"Out of anxiety, my body decides to paralyze itself when I hear a red alert. Sometimes the right leg goes numb, sometimes the left hand. Years later, they took me to Tel Hashomer for treatment, where they told me 'post-trauma.' Do you realize that since I was a two-year-old I've been suffering from PTSD? How are you supposed to live with that? Each round makes it worse than it has been since the previous round."
A.'s voice gasps and rises to high octaves, a tear rolling down her cheeks. "I've lived in a safe room for 15 years and can't sleep in another room or leave the house to play with my friends. I know I'm finishing up the army, doing everything I have to do for this country, and then I say goodbye. I feel like I'll never have the happiness I want here."
One of the mothers in the room begins to cry and turns to A.: "You talk like an adult because you lost your childhood, and I think to myself - what a stupid mother I am. I chose to move to Sderot, and now I understand what I did. How I took my childhood away from my children."
There is a silence of tears in the room. In the fading light, the screams of the children intensify. One toddler crawls towards me on the floor, grabs my leg and refuses to let go, another screams at his brother nonstop. These are not cheerful game screams, they are incessant screams of terror, echoing everything that cannot be said in words, straight from the parents' souls. Outside evening falls, and slowly the lobbyists walk into the dining room, wrapped in the silence of what has been said.
Two hits on a building and a residential building in Sderot | Sderot Municipality
"Thank you for asking how we are," Olga says in Hebrew with a foreign accent. "We haven't spoken until now because they didn't ask, and we didn't know how we felt. And I hear, listening to sad people's talk. Bad for them. I would also like you to write a thank you very much from the residents of Sderot to the hotel manager and staff, I wrote them a letter of thanks for the excellent attitude. Everyone here has an open heart, and from that I have tears in my throat. In Israel there is half and half all the time, half black and half white. Now so much black, and lo and behold, so much white."
Just before I leave the hotel, D. approaches me, as if trying to explain: "You see, many people have come here who are being treated with welfare, and even at the bottom of the bottom there is still shame. Shame to admit that you are in such a situation. But I was in Dimona before they sent me here, and there it's a completely different story. Go to Dimona, see how the evacuees are treated amazingly."
You can't escape
We arrive at the student village "Ayalim" on the edge of Dimona. The yellow caravans stand out against the background of the ancient landscape from the balcony, giving the place an atmosphere of Nahal's attachment to Mars. In the courtyard of the local restaurant "Simona" I meet Bella Yakubov and her son Eliyahu from Sderot. Part of a large family that was absorbed into the student village, just before they move into an apartment in the city.
"We were received with love and warmth," Bella says. "They put us in a room full of donations, food, clothes, bedding, towels. We didn't feel anything was missing, there was even too much. Social workers from the municipality and the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption helped us. We got a furnished apartment, everything you need. I don't feel like a refugee."
What are the plans coming soon?
"The aspiration is to return to Sderot, despite everything that is happening. I'm not afraid. We've been there since '92. We moved to Ashdod because of the Qassams, but after five years the Qassams arrived there, so we said: If we already have Qassams, it's better in Sderot. We went home. We are Jews, this is our land, and we must be strong here. I immigrated from Uzbekistan because that's where they burned our houses, and there were terrorists there too. We fled because it's not ours, but here it's ours, we can't escape. I heard people wanting to leave Sderot now, that's a big mistake."
"Despite the terror attacks and missiles," Eliyahu adds, "we always had hope that there would be peace somehow. Now that they've shown their true face, there's an understanding that it's either them or us. This incident only reinforces the opinions I had before. The state is afraid to take risks for its own security, and does not act until it is too late. They decided to act only after 1,400 people were murdered, and it's too late for them, but for the rest of the nation it will be better. People don't understand that no matter what your opinions are, as long as you're Jewish and live in Israel, they'll want to kill you, and you have to live here."
Strong for the kids
Not far from Kfar Ayalim, in a not very spacious apartment, Israeli generosity is revealed in all its might. Esther and Ohad Ruhapour-Suissa from Dimona host Iris and his uncle Gabbay from Ofakim. "I wrote to Benny Biton, the mayor of Dimona, and within an hour he found Iris and his uncle a home," says Esther. "They found frameworks for the children, and gave them the feeling that they were being seen."
Iris: "When we realized there were terrorists in Ofakim, I was hysterical. I covered the children with blankets, closed the cupboards and said, 'That's it, we're not getting out of here alive.' My mother-in-law said, 'First of all, I'm the first, I'll be shot, so I don't have to watch the others die.' Fourteen people were murdered in my neighborhood. From Saturday morning to Sunday at 14:2 A.M., we were upstairs in the room, sitting and waiting for the police to come and release us. I took what was and flew to Eilat. We evacuated ourselves at our own expense, took a suitcase with clothes, and that was it. I couldn't wait, and I haven't been able to go into my house since."
And how have you been since? You look very tired.
"I'm trying to be strong for my kids. I can't sleep, barely fall asleep at 3:00 A.M. and wake up at 5:00 A.M. My little one, who is 3 years old, gets up in the middle of the night and shouts 'Alarms ! Alarms are going off!' Until I manage to wean him off, I just leave him and he starts to 'miss'. My children will never go out on the street alone again. There was also an explosion in Dimona last night, and the children immediately looked at me and started crying. At the Dead Sea there were psychologists hanging out in the lobby, so I grabbed one and said, 'Help me,' and she talked to me."
Do you see the day after?
"To go back to how we were - I can't think about it. I'm dying to go back to my home, but I'm kind of a refugee. I can't imagine myself there. I don't have a safe room or shelter near my house. Azkas are routine. I didn't think it would reach Ofakim, but it's not just another round, it's something completely different. A white van passes by, and all the kids in the neighborhood are screaming, 'Mom, Mom, terrorists!'"
Then she falls silent, face blank of expression.
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