It was a rather absurd scene: an apartment block in the middle of Tel Aviv had a large hole where the rocket hit. Now, just a few hours after the rocket strike, I was talking to the owner of one of the penthouses in the nine-storey block. Wreckage was scattered around, the police had cordoned off the area and neighbors sat on plastic chairs and drank coffee outside. BLOCK: The high-rise block in Tel Aviv was hit by a rocket from Gaza on the evening of October 7, 2023. Photo: Åse Marit Befring / news – I used to have a five-room apartment, but now I have a two-room apartment thanks to Hamas, says the elderly the man and looks up at the block where he lives. The rocket has split the apartment in two. Fortunately, his wife and he were in another room, in the kitchen, he says. – You have to have a bit of luck in life, says the man under the black hat and smiles. The son breaks in and says that his father survived the holocaust. – Now we just have to raze Gaza to the ground. We have given them 20 years, but now it is over. Thank you for listening. We love Norway. ROCKET: Father and son stand outside the block hours after a rocket from Gaza hit the building. Photo: Åse Marit Befring / news It is Sunday morning 8 October, the day after the terrorist attack against Israel, which was the start of the bloody war in Gaza. The sun is shining, some children are on the playground, but otherwise it is unusually quiet in the big city. Shops and restaurants are closed on what is otherwise a normal weekday here. I myself had arrived on Saturday afternoon, as the first from news. I had woken up early in Istanbul on the morning of October 7, and was sitting on the sofa with coffee and a book when I looked at X. There, someone had posted a video of what looked like paragliders crossing the border from Gaza into Israel. Another showed a man wearing a Finnish cap and green headband peering through a peephole in a door. As he moved on, a person behind him came into view. He was carrying a rocket on his back. I sent a message to an Israeli I met a few weeks earlier. Roy was one of many thousands of reservists who for months had demonstrated against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu every Saturday, and threatened to refuse to serve. – What happens if Hamas has infiltrated Israel? I asked. – I don’t know. It looks ugly! answered Roy So the children were abducted Barely two hours later I was on my way to the airport in a taxi, with a bulletproof vest in my luggage, unsure of what to expect. But already when I landed in Israel it reminded me of war. The airport was almost empty of people and it was close between the signs pointing the way to the bomb bays. BOMB ROOM: At Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, signs showed the way to the bomb room on 7 October last year. Photo: Åse Marit Befring / news While I was waiting for the suitcase, I wrote to my family that I was in Israel. I couldn’t write that it went well, because I didn’t really know that. The uncertainty was great. I felt an immense discomfort. The situation was unclear with an ongoing act of terrorism a few miles away. Around 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack. It would take many hours before the Israeli defense forces were in control. At the same time, the Israeli airstrikes against Gaza began. The war was in reality underway. Since then, an average of 200 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip every day. The vast majority are women and children, who had nothing to do with the terrorist attack. When I met the man whose apartment in Tel Aviv was impaled by a rocket, Netanyahu had not yet officially declared war. I never published the interview with him, because it was overshadowed by another meeting later that day: In the afternoon I stood in the living room of a father who had seen his two children, aged 2 and 4, his wife and mother-in-law on a loading platform heading in to the Gaza Strip. HOSTAGES: Yoni Asher’s two children aged 2 and 4, and their mother and grandmother, were taken hostage by Hamas. Photo: news He had been talking to them on the phone for hours on Saturday morning. They had hid in the security room as they heard screams and gunfire outside. The last time they spoke, the wife said someone was inside the house. After that he never got an answer. He kept calling, hoping the phone had just run out of battery. I tried to put myself in his place, but it was impossible. All those he loved most had been taken hostage. He must be terrified and feel quite powerless and alone in the world. I left with an uneasy feeling, and it struck me that there would be many trips to Israel in the future. KIDNAPPED: A woman is taken hostage to Gaza on October 7, 2023. Photo: AP The struggle for democracy that subsided Now the war has entered its fifth month and I am packing for my fourth trip to Israel and the West Bank. It is still practically impossible for journalists from outside to enter Gaza. What will meet me this time? In the first weeks, Israelis were characterized by shock, fear and anger. Since then, the tone has been that they must protect themselves at all costs, and that they are the only ones who understand the threat Hamas poses to Israel and the world. Will they reflect more on the suffering on the Palestinian side now? Or is it still only Hamas’s responsibility that bombs are raining down on Gaza? Many Israelis I talk to say that their country will never be the same again. One of them is Roy, who I signed up with on the morning of October 7th. I had met him five weeks before the terrorist attack. At the time, he feared for the future of his two daughters, because he believed that Israel’s democracy was at stake. I asked him what kind of democracy Israel really was when it occupied Palestinian territories. He replied that they had closed their eyes to it for far too long, and that they now had to make up their minds about what kind of democracy Israel should be. – We are a young nation, you know. New generations think differently, he said DEMONSTRATION: Roy (th) was one of many hundreds of thousands of Israelis who demonstrated every Saturday in 2023, until the terrorist attack happened. Photo: Alem Zebic / news But it didn’t seem like that during the big demonstrations. Although many said they were against the occupation, hardly anyone called for a free Palestine. Waving Palestinian flags was cracked down on. I saw it myself. A man raised a Palestinian flag during a peaceful demonstration in front of Netanyahu’s house, and was knocked to the ground. He was then taken away between two police officers while the pro-democracy protests continued. During the mass demonstrations, the Israelis had stood together and felt strong. Now, after the nightmare of October 7, they felt vulnerable. But they rallied under the leadership of a prime minister they did not want. Reservists who just before threatened to refuse to serve the country went to the front. Roy got involved in various support groups. I met him by chance when he was leading a march for the hostages not to be forgotten. Still love Norway The two small children and their mother who were taken to the Gaza Strip during the Hamas attack were exchanged and set free after seven weeks in captivity. The old man who got a rocket through his apartment can soon move back home. The damage has been repaired. When I now, a few months later, look at the video recording of father and son outside the block, I feel an emptiness. Because what he said about razing Gaza to the ground has become a reality. It will take more than a little renovation to repair the damage Israel has inflicted on Gaza, where more than half of the buildings have been destroyed or razed to the ground, according to the UN. And the many thousands killed, the maimed, the grief many are left with, the fear Palestinians in Gaza have lived and breathed in recent months – can it even be repaired? DESTRUCTION: Over half of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed, according to the UN. Photo: AP Anger directed at Israel has grown enormously, not only among Palestinians, but throughout the world. Nevertheless, Israelis like those I met outside the apartment block in Tel Aviv demand that Hamas must be crushed. – We must get rid of the military part of Hamas so that no more people experience this, writes the son when I contact him again. There are fewer rockets coming over Israel now. But the intensity of the warfare in Gaza appears to be continuing. Norway has been among Israel’s strongest critics. – You said on the recording that you love Norway. What do you mean now? I ask him. – You are a wonderful people. We stand for the same thing; freedom, research and education. I only hope you will support us like Germany, Austria and the USA, he replies. Roy no longer knows where Israel is headed. – Every day has become a battle, he says.
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It will take more than renovation to repair the damage in Gaza – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
