In the 91 days since Gal Dalal fled the Nova festival, winter rains have seen grass and flowers flourish in the fields nearby, but his life has stayed stuck on a dusty October morning.
When Hamas closed in on 7 October, Dalal managed to escape across the fields but was separated from his younger brother. Guy – 22 years old, talented, goofy and, above all, his best friend – was kidnapped and taken to Gaza. All Gal can think about is getting him home.
“It looks different, you can see much more green around here. It makes me think how much time has passed, but for me, it’s like time has stopped,” he said on his first trip back to the Nova site, standing in eucalyptus groves that were a campsite last time he was here.
“I’m reliving that day, thinking my brother has been held [in Gaza] so long. I love him and miss him so much.”
He travelled back with relatives of other hostages and one teenager who had been kidnapped at the festival, enduring nearly two months captive in Gaza. The group wanted to remember their loved ones in the last place they were happy, and call for their return at a press conference there.
“It was very important for me to be here today,” said Itay Regev, who turned 18 soon after he was released with his sister during a brief ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar in late November.
“I was in captivity for 54 days, and every day there is like for ever. The conditions there are very, very hard to survive. The hostages cannot stay there for one more second.”
The nature reserve has become a makeshift memorial. Photos of the dead, nearly lifesize and mounted on metal posts, have created a grove of loss beside the thickets of eucalyptus, marked with flowers, candles and the Israeli flag.
The number of faces underlines the scale of the loss; 364 people were killed at the party or as they tried to escape – more than one in 10 of the party-goers. Another 40 were taken to Gaza as hostages.
Other individual memorials dot the areas where gunmen turned dance tents, bars and chill-out areas into killing zones. Relatives, friends and visiting strangers wander through to pay tribute.
“My parents started to come here every week,” said Dalal, who put off his own return until the chance to speak up for Guy, which outweighed the horrific memories. “You can definitely feel what happened here, even after so much time. But I am glad I came.”
Michael Levi thought the area would feel familiar, having searched through countless pictures and videos of the attack looking for his brother, 33-year-old Or Levi. His sister-in-law Eynav was killed 7 October, and Michael is looking after their two-year-old son, Almog.
“I wanted to visit since that day, but I thought it would be easier,” Levi said. “The feeling standing here, absorbing the atmosphere, feeling what they felt, it wasn’t easy. I’ll probably remember that feeling for the rest of my life.”
The constant thud of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, barely 5km away, echoed in the background as he spoke. A reminder of the agony unleashed there too by Hamas’ attack, the families across the border fence mourning children killed in a war triggered by the slaughter here.
More than 22,000 Palestinians have died in Israeli attacks, the majority of them civilians, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave. Thousands more are thought to be buried under rubble.
For the relatives of those held captive, each explosion echoes their worst fears, after several hostages were killed in airstrikes, according to Hamas. “It’s scary, there’s not a moment when I don’t think … I don’t even want to say,” Amit Shemtov said of the explosions.
His brother Omer was held captive with Itay Regev, a good friend, for nearly two months. Only women and children were released in the deal that brought Regev home, so Omer is still in Gaza.
Even without the threat of bombs, Amit worries about the health of his brother, who is asthmatic and lives with coeliac disease. “He is so close, and yet so far, and there is nothing we can do,” he said at the press conference, appealing for help.
After negotiations broke down in early December, Israel returned to its intense onslaught in Gaza. Hamas says it will not release more hostages without “a full cessation of aggression”. Israeli authorities say the war must continue until Hamas is destroyed, to keep Israeli citizens safe from a repeat of the slaughter on 7 October.
Gal says he hopes for peace, as long as it includes his brother’s return. “My brother and I are spiritual people,” he said. “We believe in peace, we believe in love, we believe that they [Palestinians] are here and we are here, and we need to learn to live with each other. We can’t be at war all the time.”
“I believe that we could make peace, but we could never discuss peace without discussing the hostages and their return.”
Some of those who were at the festival blame Israeli authorities for failing to protect them. A group of Nova survivors are suing the military, police and intelligence for negligence, arguing they should have protected the crowd better.
There has also been shock and some anger that Israeli soldiers shot dead three hostages who had escaped their captors in Gaza late last year. Levi said the news of those deaths was like a “punch in the stomach”, but he still believed the Israeli state and army would protect his brother.
“I spoke to the prime minister personally, the Minister of Defence personally. It is on their mind, they know that [the safety of the hostages] is the only thing that’s important at the moment,” Levi said. “I trust them to bring him back.”
For now, Michael’s focus is looking after Or’s son, as he fights to make sure he grows up with at least one parent. “Almog is not himself,” Levi said. “We cannot mention the word ‘mum’ or ‘dad’ next to him as he immediately bursts into tears.”
