Couple Rachel and David Edry survived inside their Ofakim home for 15 hours with five Hamas attackers on October 7.
She cooked for them, sang to them and communicated with them with her rudimentary Arabic.
After that time, police and civilians raided the chalet.
“If we die, we die together,” she thought at that moment, according to her testimony to local media.
The armed Islamists were annihilated and the couple emerged unscathed with her becoming a national heroine.
This Tuesday, an obituary announces on the gate of the house, still with wounds from the intense shootings on its walls, that David died the day before.
Neighbors lament that he survived the massacre and, less than five months later, he is to be buried.
This Tuesday is municipal election day in Israel.
In Ofakim and other cities, the faces of the electoral candidates form a shocking mosaic in the streets next to the omnipresent faces of the 240 hostages that the Islamists took to Gaza.
In the Mishor Hagefen neighborhood of Ofakim the atmosphere remains tense.
Edry's death is just one more drop in the midst of boredom and pain.
“We are the same as that day.
We haven't just gotten out of this,” sighs Ilana Bugnik, 60, who lives two houses away from the Edrys.
She responds with reluctance when asked about the elections.
“I don't feel like going to vote.
If anything, later,” she points out, more focused on saying that she is being assisted by a social worker and that the neighbors are demanding more help.
“We have become sad people.
We live in a lot of fear and we don't feel like doing anything,” adds Mazal Yosef, 38, next to her, while pointing to her apartment on the block opposite.
This area was a hell for hours that unfortunate Saturday when the war began with some 1,200 people murdered by Palestinian Islamists.
“Our hearts ache for the dead and we give thanks to those who saved us,” says Yosef, who has not gone to exercise his right to vote either.
The image of the current mayor, Itzik Danino, who is running for re-election, is multiplied on canvas in almost every street.
His chief of staff, Asaf Maze, 42, optimistically defends the management he has carried out in times of war.
“October 7th changed everything.
People assume that life goes on and we want to come out of all this stronger.
Voting helps us look to the future and fight the pain,” he says in an attempt to cling to the path of normality that the residents of the Mishor Hagefen neighborhood see so far away.
But it is not easy.
Smadar Dahan, 55, says he still suffers from nightmares when he remembers coming face to face with Hamas fighters.
“It was like watching a movie,” recalls this woman who also closes ranks around Danino.
A poster with one of the hostages kidnapped in Gaza along with images of candidates during the municipal elections in Israel, this Tuesday in Ashkelon.Luis de Vega
Ofakim, 25 kilometers in a straight line from Gaza and with a population of about 25,000 people, was the furthest point from the Palestinian enclave where Hamas managed to hit on October 7.
The municipal elections, scheduled for October 31, were postponed first to January and then to February 27 due to the imperative of the race.
Although thousands of inhabitants escaped, Ofakim was not officially evacuated, unlike other towns closer to the Strip and the border with Lebanon, where mayors and other officials will not be elected until November.
Background
In the rest of the country, the elections have taken place in a rarefied atmosphere.
Everything is occupied these days by the war, so the call to the polls has taken a backseat.
At 7:00 p.m. local time (6:00 p.m. Spanish peninsular time), participation was 41%, eight percentage points less than at the same time in the previous ones, in 2018. In Israel, election day is declared a holiday, but many have preferred Take advantage to go to shopping centers or take refuge at home from the rain and cold outside.
In one more example of the anomaly of the situation, Israeli soldiers have been able to cast their votes even inside Gaza, through a system known as “double envelopes” that are also used by diplomats and prisoners and are counted at the end.
Participation has been particularly low in large cities.
In Tel Aviv and Haifa, for example, it has not reached 30%.
In recent days, fears were circulating that the Lebanese militia Hezbollah would take advantage of election day to launch rockets against the center of the country.
In addition, the forum that represents the families of the around 130 hostages still in Gaza has deployed activists to the streets to insist that the apparent normality of holding elections does not mean they are forgotten.
“We choose the hostages” was the slogan they wore on the t-shirts.
Sderot, the Israeli city closest to Gaza, is one of the places where the polls have to wait.
Despite everything, the population has begun to return, cranes are seen working on buildings under construction and the shopping center has reopened in a town that almost borders the Palestinian enclave.
Its first houses are just over a kilometer away.
Elsayaf Levi is a military reservist who was turned into a tank commander by the Hamas attack.
In these four long months he has fought in Gaza, but he has not returned to his home in Sderot.
He takes advantage of a few days off without a uniform to accompany his wife to pick up some belongings at the house, but, for now, they will continue living with relatives.
Remembrance near the border with Gaza in memory of one of the victims of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Luis de Vega
In Ashkelon, a coastal city located a dozen kilometers north of the Strip, they are accustomed to living under the threat of rockets launched by Hamas since before the current armed conflict.
They have the security protocol well oiled, it is not something they have to take into account on an election day like this.
In the first ten days of the war alone, more than a thousand rockets were fired from Gaza towards this city, according to figures provided by the authorities.
“If they shoot and the alarms go off, we have about 20 seconds to get to the shelter,” says Yosef Kooper, 18, pointing to his left at the ORT Adivi school, one of the voting centers.
The young man, who wears a glow-in-the-dark vest, is one of those who helps voters find out which table they should deposit their ballot at.
The flow of voters is constant, but without crowds.
Before entering the classes where the ballot boxes are located, they pass in front of the faces of those kidnapped by Hamas, who can be seen hanging in the school yard on a tarp.
The black sky releases a downpour that is almost welcome among those entering and leaving the center.
They know that the rain could be from missiles.
They are warned in case there is an attack, which would force voting to be interrupted.
“If the sirens sound, we run to the shelter, we approach a wall or we simply throw ourselves on the ground,” explains Robert Sufaru, born in Romania 75 years ago and arrived in Israel when he was three.
“We are calm.
Life must go on,” he emphasizes.
“I'm not afraid, but I don't want to remember that we are at war,” says Seagal Shalom, a 53-year-old woman who, like Sufaru, supports the re-election of the current mayor, Tomer Glam.
Following the asphalt towards the south, around the perimeter of Gaza, the clouds give a certain respite.
For a few seconds, the sun's rays illuminate the buildings of the enclave, where almost 30,000 Palestinians have already died in the current conflict.
Military checkpoints multiply and drones and helicopters buzz in the sky while tanks rumble every so often, leaving a trail of black smoke in the air.
Some curious onlookers, equipped with binoculars, stop the car to contemplate the spectacle of war for a few minutes.
A man armed with a rifle addresses about twenty visitors at a gas station at the entrance to the Kfar Aza kibbutz, just 1,000 meters from the fence that separates Israel from the Palestinian strip and one of the scenes of the Hamas carnage.
“…and this is what happened on October 7,” the guide concludes amidst the silence of those present.
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