It was noon, and in the avenues of time stood still. A month later, and the holiday sukkots are still waving in the wind, waiting for the day after. Here and there a car passes slowly. A reservist leaves loaded with bags from the open supermarket. "I made concentrated purchases for the guys," he explains. The supermarket is almost empty. "We are here mainly for the soldiers. There are some crazy people who stayed in the city, or they had no choice and had to come back because they ran out of money or please Aref," one of the supermarket's employees tells me.
Next to the dairy products, I find Olga, who evacuated to Arad with her family, but the factory is already forcing her to return to regular work. After a few days of driving two hours each way to work, she decided to spread risks and stayed overnight in the empty city. "It's not right that the boss doesn't consider how much I travel, but I ask why the Ministry of Labor doesn't come to check how I do at the factory. Even if I walk fast from my position, there's not enough time to get to the safe room if there's an alarm."
In the almost empty city, I find Moshe Mualem from Moshe Spices, a well-known boulevard institution in the inner part of the commercial center. From the road you can't see or know it's there. "What can I tell you," he sighs, "it's not like I'm earning my day here, or earning anything at all. One or two people come here a day, a roof." The business is completely shut down. There is nothing to talk about "business" at all. "But between us, what do I have to do at home, or in which hotel? Nothing. I'm coming here so I don't go crazy."
How do you plan to get through this period?
"What am I going to do? Look, so far they haven't spoken to us from the municipality or anything, but this isn't our first round. It is true that such an event has never occurred, but I believe that the municipality will not collect municipal taxes, and that the government will provide some kind of assistance to businesses, otherwise the city can be closed. Maybe they'll be able to convince the residents to come back, but if all the businesses close and they have nowhere to buy, why should they come back?"
Sunset among the Babas
In Netivot, its neighbor to the south, it was very fortunate that Hamas terrorists were stopped and did not enter the city. But that left the city in a kind of uncertain limbo: at the shooting range, threatened, but not officially evacuated.
The seats in the Sdot Negev Regional Council around the city received permission to evacuate, but the city's residents did not. Rumor has it that the mayor is fighting to get recognition from the government, but in the meantime those whose wallet allowed him to vacate themselves independently, or settled with generous family and friends.
Midday. The city is experiencing car and pedestrian traffic, but most of the main business avenue is closed. It is unpleasant to see the Eiffel Tower closed, even if it is a miniature model in Netivot.
Kobi Gayer's stand in Netivot doesn't have a name, but ask where Kobi's meatballs are - and everyone will know how to direct you to the corner next to the "Hafrana" bakery, which Netivot even calls "Elisha". That's how it is in the city of the Babas - it's all miracles and wonders.
For eight years, Geyer, a journalist and editor of the local newspaper, has been preserving the ancient tradition of mothers and grandmothers on Fridays. They would fry meatballs, and out of the boiling oil the patties were thrown straight into the parana pita. A little pickles and spicy matbucha, which will calm even the most annoying of hungry men - and come on, go. In normal times, Kobi's meatballs are a tourist attraction that attracts people from all over the country. Now he has returned all the way from Eilat to Netivot.
"Already on the first Friday after the massacre, people came to Netivot, called me and said, 'Kobe, where are you, why not open?' They were almost angry that I ruined their Friday habits," he laughs. "The truth is that I wasn't in Netivot on Black Saturday. We needed freedom, and we did the second holiday of Sukkot in Eilat. On Saturday night I turned on the TV and my eyes darkened. Judging by the number of fatalities, I immediately understood that we would have nowhere to return to. I realized there wouldn't be a school for my four children, and we rented a house in Eilat for a month."
And how do you get absorbed in Eilat?
"It's crazy, well done to the residents of Eilat. I think about how much we, the Israeli vacationers, preferred Turkey, and when we see Erdogan's attitude to the situation, and at the same time the attitude of the Eilats, we make considerations for the future about where it is better to vacation: with the anti-Semites in Turkey - or at home, with the charming Eilats."
From what you hear, even as a journalist, what is the state of business in the city?
"Not good. Business took a hit. I'm lucky to be a street stall, but my heart is with all the businesses that have bills, property taxes and rent. The bills accumulate to them, and they have no income. Only a few opened businesses. The residents were replaced by soldiers, members of the Home Front Command and many other officials. Since they don't have a home, it makes the food business flourish. But not everyone opened. After three weeks, I opened. I have a stall next to three bakeries that opened, and people called and told me they were disappointed, that I ruined Friday's ceremony. It hurt to hear. So I went to Netivot and opened for a few hours, so as not to break the tradition. Then I drove back to Eilat to get there before Shabbat."
Kobi says that at the moment it is a "routine of war." "In war, as in war, nothing is expected. But I am now organizing a petition, because the crisis of trust with the leadership after this failure requires some commitments regarding the situation at the end of the fighting."
It lists some of the clauses: "The collapse of the military and governmental capabilities of all the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, full Israeli control of the Gaza-Egypt border at the Rafah crossing, the definition of an area at a reasonable distance from the fence where anyone who infiltrates is shot at, and a complete disengagement from the Gaza Strip. After these things, maybe we can talk about returning to normal."
Longing for closure
On the way east of the envelope, I meet A., a Bedouin who operates a café. Many of the customers are not aware that he is also the landlord. A prefers it that way. "It's not worth complicating, in the end all the self-employed people are a man to himself. The first week we didn't open, there were no people and it was scary to come here or leave the house. I'm with a little girl. I can't stop thinking about what would have happened if I had lived a few kilometers west that Shabbat."
After week one, he reopened, even if only for half the day. "Even with all the soldiers who pass through here, I opened for service. I knew there wouldn't be any crazy work, but I wanted to keep in touch with the customers. I realized that it was important for them too. And I have police officers who come here regularly, lovely people. Some won't come anymore."
Other business owners are comparing the atmosphere to that of the coronavirus lockdowns.
"It's a little different, because everything is so much scarier. I didn't put the workers on unpaid leave, because it's not clear what they'll get and what they'll not, so they're cutting back so that everyone will earn something. These are not our usual hours. I already want to open for more hours, but the way I tried it, a missile fell nearby, and there was such a line to enter the safe room, that I panicked and said it was better to open only for a few hours, and that no one would die here because of coffee."
Credit secrets of the South
I didn't expect to find particularly happy business owners – but all the way from the envelope out, the meetings with the business owners left me feeling that the economic tsunami was on its way. I stop at one of the farther points from the envelope, in the Kiryat Malachi area, and talk to Israel, a manager at a credit solutions company who lives in the south and who sees the credit secrets of hundreds of businesses in the south.
The drop is very significant, he states. "At the beginning of the operation, it was reported that there had been an 80 percent decline in credit transactions, but this was an isolated event, and it is wrong to relate to it from a macro perspective. A month later, there is a significant decline of more than 30 percent in credit transactions. There are businesses where it is less noticeable, such as food and basic consumer goods, and there are businesses where the drop is much sharper. This is a rolling event, but it is clear that without returning the economy to normal, it will only get worse.
"Right now, people are saving their money and not spending online, which is a sure recipe for a deep recession. Businesses in the south don't work, or work at low intensity. I was also placed on unpaid leave, and there are many thousands more like me. You understand that the state of business at the moment is like the map of the Home Front Command. The farther you get from the envelope, the more time you have to deal with the explosion that comes to you."
This melody
I think about this image of Israel, that the state of business is reminiscent of the Home Front Command's risk map, and it becomes tangible when I come to Rishon LeZion to look for a guitar for a friend who was evacuated from her apartment in the Gaza Strip. Alarms are also sounded on Sunday, and she too suffered injuries - but she is far from the ghostly atmosphere in Sderot and Netivot.
"During COVID-19, the musical instrument market worked," Shauli Somekh, the owner of the city's Music Center, tells me. "People were sitting at home, playing and recording, doing things. Now the situation is fundamentally different. A lot of customers are recruited, there are no paid shows, no recordings, no new songs, and around the musicians there is a whole industry of people whose whole business has collapsed. Amplification companies, sound technicians, lights, concert venues - the entire entertainment market has come to a complete halt here.
"So yes, the state of business, certainly those that are not immediate needs, is worse than during the pandemic. We left all the employees, we didn't put them on unpaid leave, because it's not clear what's happening at the moment. We work with families, and I can't leave them without a salary, so we reduced hours for everyone, and in the first few weeks we dealt more with donating musical instruments than sales," he smiles. "We did a lot of cooperation with all kinds of people and bodies, we donated guitars, keyboards, percussion, and all these instruments that will make the soldiers and evacuees happy."
That's great, but volunteering isn't really a long-term business plan.
"True, but there's nothing we can do, this is the time and this is the time. In the meantime, we live on reserves, because all expenses are the same: municipality, municipal taxes, rents, building management fees, workers' wages. In the stores we work with in the south and north, shopping and sales have also dropped very, very significantly."
Fadida, the store's showroom manager, joins the conversation: "Most people buy basic things, like strings, cables and stand, but every once in a while some person comes along and buys Martin's guitar for thousands of shekels. Because voila, it's important to eat - but it's also important food for the soul, and in the end I'm not sure what costs more, a treatment session or a great guitar. And by the way, it's not at all certain that a psychologist is more effective than a new guitar..."
A month after the start of the operation, do you see any return to routine at the center?
Somekh: "It depends on how long the reserve forces will be held. A lot of musicians and workers are being recruited, and half the country is away from home. Who is it interesting now to buy a musical instrument? The entertainment and art market is the market that is hit first and returns last. I don't see that the government is in the direction of finding solutions. An employee of mine stays at home with the children because his wife works. He was sure he would get support, but then discovered that only those within 7,200 meters get support. What is he supposed to make a living from?"
On the margins of the labor market
And when I look for a horizon of hope, I find it in Bedouin society. A report by the Ripman Institute for the Advancement of Bedouin Society in the Negev reveals that the percentage of Palestinian workers in the construction industry as a whole stands at 27%. In agriculture, the percentage of Palestinian workers stands at 15%, and in production and harvesting the rates are dramatically higher. This is true for other industries that relied on Palestinian workers and are now crying out for working hands.
The Bedouin organization "Ryan" and the Ripman Institute organized an employment conference in Rahat this week, calling on large employers to use the available manpower in the Negev, within Bedouin society, in a variety of industries. "Bedouin society showed exceptional responsibility in this campaign, and clearly showed that it is a significant part of Israeli society – in hosting the evacuees, assisting soldiers, enlisting in the harvest and in partnership with the fighting forces, as part of the tracker system and the Bedouin patrol battalion," says Hagai Reznik, head of the Ripman Institute, former director general of the Housing Ministry.
"But this is also a society that suffers from unemployment approaching 20 percent. There is an opportunity here to bring an entire public to take part in increasing productivity and getting out of poverty. To continue to build the bloody alliance between us into a brotherly alliance for all intents and purposes, including economically."
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us