Post is no longer delivered to Nir Oz kibbutz; the lights in the mailroom are off, and the floor is gathering dust. Many of the metal boxes bearing each family’s name now have new labels: red and black stickers that say “killed” or “hostage”.
Natan Bahat, 82, knew nothing would be waiting for him, but half-heartedly checked his postbox anyway. “Time stopped here on 7 October,” he said.
Bahat’s family left Nazi-era Germany and eventually found a home in Israel. As a young man, he became one of the founders of Nir Oz, a kibbutz established in 1955. It was hard work, he said, but he loved the deep connection to the land and to other people central to the kibbutz lifestyle. Now a widower, he raised his family here, and never left.
Today, the dedicated kibbutznik is one of only two people from the once 400-strong community still living in Nir Oz after a quarter of its residents were kidnapped or killed by Hamas during the Palestinian militant group’s rampage through southern Israel a year ago. Bahat’s home is one of six buildings in the entire kibbutz left unscathed.
At about 6.30am on Saturday 7 October 2023 – the Jewish holy day of Shabbat and Simchat Torah, the last of the autumnal high holidays – about 150 heavily armed Hamas fighters attacked Nir Oz from three directions, getting through Israel’s defences by blowing up security cameras, automated weapons systems and motion detectors before mowing down the fence.
The first group of seven shot out the kibbutz guard post. The security team was quickly outnumbered and most were killed or taken hostage, leaving the community even more vulnerable as the wave of terror began.
Per capita, the Nir Oz community suffered the most heartache, damage and bloodshed, in part because the overwhelmed Israeli army “forgot” about the kibbutz. Soldiers did not show up for hours, by which time all the Hamas fighters, and later waves of civilians and looters, had left.
The Hamas assault, in which about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 abducted to the Gaza Strip, forever changed the region and the world. Its consequences are yet to fully unfold or be understood.
In Gaza, more than 41,000 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory war, which has reduced the strip to ruins and left survivors trapped in a living nightmare where food, water, shelter and medicine are in scarce supply. There is no end in sight to the fighting, and Israeli actions suggest Gaza’s future will be long-term military occupation. In Lebanon, a year of simmering cross-border conflict has finally erupted into a full-scale war that could drag in Iran and the US.
But Nir Oz, one of the places where the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict roared back to life last year, is now quiet but for the cries of attention-starved cats and the soft song of wind chimes. Shelling and airstrikes in Gaza can be heard in the distance.
Agricultural work – peanuts, potatoes, wheat and avocado – is still under way with the help of paid foreign workers, and the gardens and greenery are being looked after by volunteers. But the lush grass and flowering frangipani trees cannot hide the kibbutz’s burned-out, ransacked houses.
Most of them have not been touched since the attack, and signs of struggle remain; bloodstains smear walls and floors. In one home, the washing-up still waits in the rack next to the sink, covered in a thick layer of dirt, and a coffee mug sits on the table. It looks as though the occupants only expected to step away for a minute.
“I don’t know if all the families will come back. I can’t judge them if they decide not to. But Nir Oz was a paradise,” Bahat said.
The kibbutz was built on land that belonged to the Palestinian village of Ma’in Abu Sitta before the creation of Israel in 1948, but, like many kibbutzim, was strongly wedded to socialist and leftwing principles.
Many of the community were active members of Israel’s small anti-occupation movement, volunteering to escort sick people from Gaza issued with Israeli permits to leave the blockaded territory for treatment in Jerusalem or the West Bank. Nir Oz’s older generations have fond memories of visits to the Gaza seaside and shopping in neighbouring Khan Younis before Hamas took over.
Several of Nir Oz’s older peace activists, such as Oded Lifshitz, 84, and Ada Sagi, 75, were taken on 7 October. Unable to keep the doors of their safe rooms closed, they were seized with little struggle. At the homes of younger people, Hamas lit fires to try to force out those who had barricaded themselves in. The entire Siman Tov family – Yonatan, 36, Tamar, 35, five-year-old twins Shahar and Arbel, and Omer, two, and Yonatan’s 70-year-old mother, Carol, were killed this way.
Some kibbutzim ravaged on 7 October, notably Beeri, have begun rebuilding, and residents have started to return. While architects and construction companies have drawn up detailed plans for Nir Oz, the damage is so great it is estimated it will take at least three years to make it habitable.
Like the kibbutz itself, a year later everyone from Nir Oz remains in limbo.
Dorin Rai, 43, doesn’t come home often; her family now live in a small apartment paid for by the government in the working-class town of Kiryat Gat, about an hour away.
The therapist makes the trip when one of her three children asks her to retrieve something they left behind, but, more often than not, she can’t find it, as so many of the family’s belongings were taken by looters. Surveying the damage brings back memories of that terrifying day; every room is ransacked and covered in bullet holes, every window broken.
Dorin, her husband, Bijay, 45, and their children, Maya, 12, Neha, 10, and Ram, eight, piled into Ram’s bedroom, the reinforced concrete safe room, when sirens started blaring at about 6.30am.
Normally, the air raid alert ends in a few minutes, but that morning the rockets kept coming. Realising this was no ordinary attack and, about 15 minutes later, hearing gunfire outside, she tried to keep the children calm, making them lie down on blankets on the floor. Bijay propped himself between the door and the bed, using his weight to keep the long handle turned up, which kept the door locked.
Four times, Hamas managed to pry the door ajar, and four times, Bijay somehow found the strength to pull the handle back round and seal it again. As the day wore on, strangers came into the house another six times. Based on what they could hear, the family believe they were civilian looters rather than trained fighters.
When they were finally rescued, the Rais emerged to find their home turned upside down – missing items ranged from Dorin’s jewellery, to kitchen appliances, to one of the children’s baby albums. Social media videos from the day show civilians trying to take the family’s two dogs.
“It was very hard to believe what was happening. I was sure we were going to die; I sent voice notes to my sister telling her I loved her and asking if she would take care of the kids if something happened. I spoke in English because I didn’t want the kids to understand how scared I was,” Dorin said.
“I love Nir Oz and I miss everyone so much. Some days I want to come back so badly and rebuild our lives, other days, I don’t know. I can’t ever let something like 7 October happen to my children again,” she said.
The Nir Oz community was buoyed briefly by Hamas’s unilateral release of two elderly women from the kibbutz – Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, and Nurit Yitzhak, 79 – in late October. Another 40 came home during the November ceasefire, which lasted a week before it collapsed, reportedly because Hamas could not locate any more women and children to swap.
The Bibas brothers, Kfir, now four, and Ariel, one, from Nir Oz, are the only Israeli children still in Gaza. Hamas says they were killed in an airstrike along with their mother, Shiri, 33, although Israel maintains they are alive. Their father, Yarden, 35, is also a hostage; Shiri’s parents were murdered in the kibbutz on 7 October.
News of the hostages has been in short supply since the ceasefire, and what does arrive is not usually welcome. In the kibbutz’s empty dining hall, four tables are laid out: two for the dead, one for those released and one for those still in captivity. Twenty-nine people from Nir Oz remain in Gaza, at least nine of whom Israel has said are believed to be dead.
Dolev Yehud, 35, a volunteer medic, left his pregnant wife, Sigal, 36, and their three children in the safe room early on 7 October and went to help his friends and family elsewhere in the kibbutz. He was believed to be a hostage, but in June, the Israeli authorities announced they had identified his remains; the civil engineer had died that day. His sister, Arbel, 29, and her boyfriend, Ariel Cunio, 27, are still hostages, as is Ariel’s brother, David, 34.
For Arbel and Dolev’s parents, Yael, 58, and Yehi, 65, each day is harder than the last. Like many people from Nir Oz, they are angry at how the state abandoned their family on 7 October. They also feel their daughter is being forsaken again as the Israeli government stalls on brokering a second hostage release deal. Their fate has become an increasingly political issue.
“In the beginning, the government was happy to let the hostage families fly around the world, rallying everyone to the war effort. But as the months have gone by, it is clear Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu] was using us,” said Yehi, his voice rising.
“If it was Yair and Avner [Netanyahu’s sons], they would have come home on 9 October.”
Netanyahu is a master at stoking division. Supporters of the Israeli prime minister now show up at the weekly protests for a hostage deal and attack the captives’ families, whom they say are putting their children ahead of the rest of the country.
Hamas and Israel blame each other for the many rounds of stalled negotiations, but many in Israel view Netanyahu as an obstacle to a deal. The prime minister views staying in office as his best chance of beating corruption charges, and a new agreement with Hamas would anger his far-right coalition partners, potentially collapsing his government.
He is also afraid his legacy will be ruined by the intelligence and response failures of 7 October, which may come to be overshadowed by Israel’s new war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
It is no longer clear whether Hezbollah and the other Iranian allies Israel faces in the region consider the conflict as separate from ending the fighting in Gaza. The spectre looms of more death and destruction caused by a regional war.
“War with Iran, with Yemen, with Syria, with Iraq, with Lebanon, with Hamas. How is this better than a deal? How does this keep us safe?” Yehud asked.
“Now there are not just 101 hostages in Gaza. Now 9 million citizens are Netanyahu’s hostages.”
