As their stay at the Dead Sea ends, Be’eri evacuees look to the future, with hope
In August, after 10 months in hotels, most Kibbutz Be’eri members will relocate to a temporary neighborhood in a kibbutz outside Beersheba until their homes are rebuilt
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
EIN BOKEK — Outside the David Dead Sea Resort & Spa, it is a blazing hot and sunny Thursday afternoon. Despite the current dearth of tourism in wartime Israel, the outdoor parking areas are packed to overflowing with vehicles, and the short walk to the main entrance seems to take forever due to the 44ºC (111ºF) heat.
Inside the modern, multi-storied vacation complex, it is refreshingly cool and air-conditioned, a welcome relief from the weather outside. Located in Ein Bokek amidst a row of resorts and hotels overlooking the Dead Sea, for almost nine months the David Dead Sea Resort has been the impromptu home for hundreds of evacuees from Gaza-adjacent Kibbutz Be’eri, which was largely destroyed during the brutal October 7 Hamas-led assault on southern Israel.
Their stay along the Dead Sea is soon to come to an end. In August, the evacuees are due to leave the hotel and relocate to a temporary neighborhood being built for them in Hatzerim, a kibbutz just west of Beersheba.
Until then, “We are evacuees deluxe,” jokes Tzvi Alon, a grey-haired man with a gentle demeanor, referring to the spectacular location, the hotel facilities and the willingness of the staff to accommodate the special needs of the kibbutz members. A former kibbutz secretary, Alon, along with his wife Yochi, are on hand to greet The Times of Israel in the hotel lobby.
It will still take an estimated two to three years to rebuild Be’eri. Two other communities, Kfar Aza and Nir Oz, were also heavily damaged on October 7 and have a similar timeframe for rebuilding. Other communities along the Gaza envelope will take up to one or one-and-a-half years, an official at the Tekuma Authority, the government body created to oversee the rebuilding of the envelope and provide for the evacuees, tells The Times of Israel.
The Be’eri community is set to move to the new government-sponsored neighborhood in Kibbutz Hatzerim in August and live there until they can return to Be’eri itself. Kfar Aza and Nir Oz members, likewise, are to move to newly built neighborhoods for the duration, in Ruchama and Kiryat Gat, respectively.
Other communities with less waiting time will continue with subsidized housing in their current locations, the Tekuma official says.
Moving en mass to Hatzerim will be more convenient because it is a lot closer to Be’eri, and the community will be able to have a lifestyle more in line with what they had at the kibbutz, but it will be hard to leave the hotel for another temporary location after all they have been through, the Alons say.
In addition, Hatzerim is right next to an IAF base, which gives some from Be’eri pause because they feel the area could be targeted if the security situation deteriorates.
Nonetheless, “about 70 percent of Be’eri are waiting to go to Hatzerim,” Tzvi Alon says.
At home, but away
It’s easy to see why some might be reluctant to leave the hotel, as the entire David Dead Sea Resort & Spa appears to have been taken over by Be’eri. There is a feeling of being on a kibbutz, as everyone seems to know each other. Families stroll about, kids are playing and the hotel has even allowed the evacuees to bring their dogs. Some of the kibbutz families at the hotel have four generations here, Tzvi Alon explains.
Next to the main entrance, a large memorial for Be’eri residents killed on October 7 greets arrivals, next to a display of those still held in Gaza. The spacious central atrium is prominently adorned with slogans and banners calling for the release of the hostages held in Gaza.
Another area has been outfitted with other impromptu facilities, including a recreation of the old kibbutz tailoring shop, with a row of sewing machines and equipment for clothing repairs.
Around the corner, there is a dedicated art studio full of supplies. Overseen by two volunteer teachers, a group of talkative teenage girls, including the Alon’s granddaughter, are taking a class.
In another section, the hotel bar has been converted into a communal kitchen, where classes are held and evacuees who tire of the hotel fare can schedule times to cook their own meals or bake.
Walking through the hotel, Yochi Alon, a vivacious, dark-haired woman of Yemenite-Jewish ancestry, points out various friends, and with tears in her eyes recounts who from their families was killed, and how, on October 7. At a circular table, she greets several people having coffee.
“When we arrived here, this table was covered with supplies, toiletries, clothes, whatever we needed,” she recalls, explaining that in the immediate aftermath of the pogrom, they only had “five minutes to pack up” before being evacuated.
The synagogue builder
Over lunch in the hotel dining room, Tzvi and Yochi Alon are joined by Rachel Fricker, another long-time Be’eri member.
“When we came here, we were greatly traumatized. You are a refugee in your own country… It took us time to get organized. We learned,” Fricker recalls.
Almost 20 years ago, Fricker was responsible for convincing the staunchly secular kibbutz to allow a small building to be converted to a synagogue, and despite some initial trepidation, the community began to enthusiastically use the synagogue for bar mitzvahs, holiday celebrations and more.
After October 7 Be’eri became a closed military zone, and the house of prayer entered into use by religious IDF soldiers stationed there, something widely reported on in the Hebrew media, turning Priker, for a time, into a mini-celebrity and the face of Be’eri for many.
“It’s quite a story, what happened on Simchat Torah,” she says, referring to the Jewish holiday that fell over October 6-7 last year. On the evening of Friday, October 6, the beginning of the holiday, “we had a great party with many people and kids. And some of them were killed the next day, or taken captive. Our whole lives were upended at 6:30 a.m.”
“I want to give thanks. People died, and I also could have. But I survived. It’s not guaranteed,” Fricker says.
Fricker, like many of the Be’eri survivors, laid low in a safe room for more than a day. “I was stuck in the safe room with six people, including my daughter-in-law who was nine months pregnant. She gave birth two days later. And so I say, we entered as six and came out seven! It’s not a gift? I can’t say thank you for this? My first grandchild.”
Fricker, an elegant retired nurse, worries about what the Be’eri evacuees have endured. “If we are eaten up by the trauma, that’s just more people who were killed along the way,” she says. “We’ll become the living dead. We need to look to the future, with hope.”
But right now “the community is divided,” she continues. “I know Be’eri will rise again and be strong. I don’t know if everyone will return. I don’t know if we will have security. That is what will influence people to come back or not, especially families with children.”
Art therapy
After lunch, the Alons, over cake and coffee in the hotel room serving as their temporary home, tell their own tale of survival. Their room bears the marks of their long habitation: artwork from the downstairs studio on the walls, shelves with clothes and books, and a small corner table cluttered with papers and a laptop. Plants, exercise equipment and miscellaneous boxes can be seen outside on the small balcony.
They are lucky, as some families, especially those with young kids, are “five or six in a room like this,” Tzvi Alon notes.
Their daughter Neta and their three grandchildren had moved from Be’eri just a few weeks before October 7, because “she couldn’t deal with the Kassams anymore,” he says, a reference to the regular rocket attacks communities near Gaza have been subjected to for many years.
But they had come to visit for the holiday, and “because Neta was there, I didn’t go on my early morning bike ride as usual that Shabbat,” he recalls, something which he feels likely saved his life, as he would have probably encountered the terrorist intruders alone and unarmed on his ride.
As Whatsapp messages about the assault went around the kibbutz networks, the family gathered supplies and went into their safe room, where they would stay for some 30 hours as the battles and destruction raged around them.
“We were lucky. I grabbed the jachnun [a Yeminite bread usually served on Shabbat], tomato sauce, yogurt, cereal” and other supplies, Yochi Alon says, noting that “there were others with no food. We had emergency lights and a charging bank for the phones, to keep in touch.”
The family emerged physically unscathed but deeply shocked and horrified at what their community, and their country, had experienced.
“They came with a purpose, to destroy, to murder and to capture,” Tzvi Alon says.
When they got to the Dead Sea hotel, like much of the community, they began using the therapy services that had been set up to help them process their experiences. Eventually, because of a still ongoing project of making notebooks of intuitive and colorful collages in the art studio, “I stopped the therapy,” Yochi Alon explains, showing off her large collection of pieces.
“I stopped also, because she was so busy with the notebooks she wasn’t around as much, and so I didn’t need therapy anymore,” her husband jokes, before kissing her fondly on her brow.
A pogrom, and looking to the future
The October 7 attack saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stream into southern Israel in a surprise early-morning breach of Israel’s defenses, ravaging whole communities and setting off the still-raging Israel-Hamas war. Over 1,200 were slain, often gruesomely, and some 250 were taken captive.
At Be’eri, after the initial shock assault, the battle continued while many residents hid in their fortified rooms. Numerous episodes, including a dramatic hostage situation in the main dining hall, and the heroic actions of a group that later was dubbed “Team Elhanan,” were to become very well known.
Over 100 Be’eri residents were killed in the attack, about 10 percent of the population, and 30 were taken hostage. Most of those were freed in the November cease-fire, but 11 remain, and of these, kibbutz officials think only three or four remain alive.
Some 150 buildings in the kibbutz were destroyed or damaged beyond repair, and the Alons’ neighborhood is slated to be “completely razed” as part of the rebuilding efforts, they said.
Currently, “there are about 600 members in the hotel, and another 100 back in Be’eri working in the printing press and in agriculture. Then there are 300 more scattered around,” some of these in small groups in Tel Aviv and Ein Gedi, Tzvi Alon explains.
Despite the current circumstances, Be’eri still functions as a full kibbutz in terms of sharing resources and decision-making, and regular meetings are held at the hotel, which because of the concentration of members became the de facto “kibbutz headquarters in exile,” he says.
The Be’eri commercial printing press, one of the largest in the country and the main source of the kibbutz’s famous prosperity, resumed operations just a week and a half after October 7, and the kibbutz agriculture concerns, including the well-known dairy, followed shortly after, meaning that the kibbutz is still solvent.
The Tekuma Authority, which has been covering the lodging costs for Gaza envelope evacuees, has said it has allocated funding to build new neighborhoods in the damaged communities in an effort, expected to be successful, to attract new, younger families.
At Be’eri, the cornerstone for such a neighborhood was laid in recent days.
