2 years after Hamas-led attack, an Israeli town struggles to rebuild

Beeri, Israel – Little changed in the home of Miri Gad Messika’s parents two years ago, when Hamas-led militants exploded in this small community less than two miles from the tip of Gaza, killing more than 100 people and kidnapping 32 others.

The scorch marks from the fighting that day still strain the walls, and the undergrowth of bullet-shattered tiles crackles with each step of Messika. On the side sits a stuffed panda doll, dusty and discarded on what was left of a kitchen counter.

“We always used to say that this place is 99% heaven and 1% hell,” Messika said, his eyes scanning the room before looking out into the ravaged courtyard.

Miri Gad Messika, a resident of Beeri who was on the kibbutz on the day of the massacre on October 7, 2023, is shown in his parents’ destroyed house on the second anniversary of the attack.

(Yahel Gazit / for the Times)

The sky part was where she knew her whole life as a third-generation resident of Beeri, with her printing crew and basketball team. Hell? It was the periodic rocket attacks over decades of push-ups between the militant group Hamas and Israel that would send residents running to their safety rooms.

“But we knew how to handle it,” she said. “We just went into the safe room and closed the door. That’s all.”

But 10 minutes after the assault that fateful Saturday morning on October 7, 2023, Messika understood that it was “a historic event”.

Visitors highlight photos of loved ones who were killed at the NOVA Music Festival on October 7, 2023.

(Yahel Gazit / for the Times)

“We weren’t prepared for something like this,” she said.

On Tuesday, the second anniversary of the attack, Messika and others across Israel recalled the day that sparked the country’s longest war, shattered Israelis’ long-held sense of security and entrenched hatred and division long into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The scars last like the lingering smell of soot in his parents’ house.

Four Beeri residents remain in Hamas hands, but none are alive, Messika said, adding to a tally of 102 people who have been killed – almost 10% of the kibbutz population. And while a few hundred residents have returned to live here, most remain in alternative housing, awaiting a reconstruction project to repair the 134 homes destroyed in the attack, including Messika.

Messika is building a new house and is adamant that she, her husband and their three children will continue to live here among the community of those who survived. But there are days – like Tuesday – when she wakes up with a migraine that makes her “want to never wake up.”

“How do you digest the loss of 102 people?” She said.

The Hamas operation began around 6:29 a.m. and involved a rocket and drone barrage, paragliding commandos and teams of fighters traveling on vans and motorcycles from Gaza into southern Israel. In the end, around 1,200 people were killed, two-thirds civilians, according to Israeli authorities, and around 250 people were kidnapped.

There is hope here and in the region that there may soon be an end to the war. Last week, President Trump presented a 20-point peace plan that has since been accepted – for the most part – by Hamas and Israel. Final negotiations are underway this week in Egypt, with the expectation that all the hostages – the 20 who are alive, and the 28 who are believed to be dead – will be handed over in the coming days.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a statement Tuesday, pledged U.S. support for Israel and said the peace proposal “provides a historic opportunity to close this dark chapter and build a foundation for lasting peace and security for all.”

But even if that were to happen, said Shosh Sasson, 72, there was a sense of something that had been irreparably broken.

“I never thought an attack like this would happen here. We always felt safe. But now the ground under our feet feels shaky. Yes, even now, because the problem is not over,” said Sasson, who came with her husband to pay respects at a shelter-turned-shrin on the highway outside Beeri.

Her husband, Yaakov, agreed. “For the future it will always be like this. Our neighbors don’t want to live with us in a friendly way,” he said.

Nearby in Reim, the site of the NOVA Music Festival, where around 300 concertgoers were killed, visitors wandered through a memorial site, with posters bearing images of the victims and a description of their final moments.

A few yards away, a touring group from Eagles’ Wings, an organization that brings Christians to visit and support Israel, listened reverently to Chen Malca, 26, as she described her experience surviving the Nova attack. When she finished, a priest led a prayer, placing his hand on Malca’s head while the others raised their hands to the sky.

“We pray for the destruction of Hamas and the destruction of evil, just a few meters from us in Gaza, father,” he said.

As he spoke, an explosion went off in the distance, then another. One of the Eagles wing organizers reassured the group that this was “Israeli action activity in Gaza. There is nothing to fear.”

Kati Zohar, 55, who guarded Vigil before a memorial for her daughter, Bar, 23, who was killed while trying to warn police that Hamas fighters were nearby, Zohar said.

She and her husband moved four months ago to the town of Sderot – a 20-minute drive – to be near their daughter’s memorial.

“Whenever I feel like I’m missing, I come here and sit with her, drink a cup of coffee, smoke a cigarette, talk to her… because this is the last place she was alive and happy,” she said.

Although once a happy person, “I’m not happy anymore, and I don’t think I will be again,” she said. “A part of me is missing.

Her sadness, Zohar said, was matched by her disappointment that the Israeli military had not done more to stop the attacks and save her daughter, and by her anger that the war was still continuing with the hostages still not returned as the world turned against Israel.

Israel’s campaign since the attack has so far killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, the majority civilians, has left nearly 170,000 injured and obliterated the enclave, although almost all of Gaza’s residents are now displaced. The United Nations, rights groups, experts and many Western governments accuse Israel of committing genocide.

Israel denies the charge, even as it faces unprecedented levels of opprobrium.

“Everyone says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, so what did Gaza do to Israel on October 7, it’s not genocide?” Said Zohar.

She added that she did not believe peace with the Palestinians in Gaza was possible. “If they don’t send missiles, it’s drones or balloons, or another October 7,” she said.

“We are not trying to disturb them, we are not sending missiles or drones,” she added. “We say: ‘Let us live in peace, you live in peace.’ But they don’t want that.

ACLED, a conflict monitor, released a report on Tuesday detailing attacks in Gaza by the Israeli military since October 7, 2023. The report collected more than 11,110 air and drone strikes; More than 6,250 bombings, artillery or missile attacks and around 1,500 armed clashes.

Beeri resident Messika also felt disillusioned with the prospect of peace. Before the war, residents of Kibbutzim tried to help Gazans, hiring them for jobs or taking them for medical treatment. And she remembered her father telling her to go to Gaza to eat falafel – “he had the best falafel, he always said” – and buying produce at its vegetable markets. But the notions of helping Gazans were born from Naivete.

“We know there are no innocent civilians in Gaza…. They hate us,” she said, adding that Trump’s plan, which involves disarming Gaza, was the right solution. Messika was still debating with other residents whether all damaged houses should be demolished, or whether some should be kept as memorials.

“Some say we can’t come back and live near a place like this. It would be like living near Auschwitz,” she said. But for her, it was about turning October 7 into a learning opportunity. Without it, she insisted, the suffering would all be for naught. Although the Kibbutz council said the demolitions were appealed, she appealed and was awaiting a new verdict.

“The next generation, they have to learn and see with their own eyes, to get through it,” she said. “It’s not enough to make a website or a memorial. This is proof of history, for what happened to our friends. And I don’t want it to be destroyed.”

About 10 miles away in Sderot, people flock to a mountain on the edge of town, which over the years has become a popular vantage point for a glimpse of Gaza, with a telescope – cost: five shekels – for a closer look at the landscape. Suddenly, in the distance, a large cloud of smoke bloomed somewhere beyond the destroyed edge of Gaza’s Nuseirat camp.

Some raised their smartphones to record the video. Others nodded gratefully and praised the “work ethic” of the Israeli military during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Behind them, children played in the afternoon sun.