Survivors of Kibbutz Nir Oz, a desert oasis, move into Kiryat Gat apartment towers

Toting flags and banners, hundreds of high school students awaited the final group of survivors from Kibbutz Nir Oz as they moved on Tuesday into six apartment buildings in Kiryat Gat.

The welcoming party — its ranks bolstered by Kiryat Gat residents who joined in spontaneously — treated the arrival of the newcomers as a happy occasion: Many shouted out joyfully as the October 7 attack survivors’ tour bus, preceded by a police car, pulled up to the neighborhood where the kibbutznikim will stay for at least a year.

The mood was different for the arriving members of Nir Oz, a kibbutz of about 400 people where Hamas terrorists on October 7 killed or abducted one in four people as they torched and blew up many of the manicured community’s homes and structures.

The destruction in Nir Oz is so profound that it has been left out of the government resettlement plan, which is said to aim at having have nearly all communities that had been evacuated from border areas return by September. Restoring Nir Oz may take up to two years, a resettlement official told The Times of Israel this week.

“It’s better than the hotel,” said Nir Oz member Jonathan Dekel-Chen, referencing Isrotel Yam Suf in Eilat, where the survivors had stayed until this week. “But you’re moving into a place that you did not choose. We’re here because we have no choice. Nobody’s jumping up and down,” he told The Times of Israel on Wednesday in between move-related errands.

Dual US-Israeli citizen Dekel-Chen’s son, Sagui, is held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.

Many locals tried to celebrate the relocation as a way of boosting morale, according to Mordi Israel, a history teacher and father of two from Kiryat Gat, who attended the welcoming event.

“They’re deeply traumatized. They’re grieving and homeless. But they’ve reached a loving home and a warm community. They just don’t know it yet, but we wanted to show it,” Israel said.

The arrival of the survivors — most of whom had lost their furniture, books, pets, and many other precious possessions – underlined both the extent of the trauma that countless Israelis experienced on October 7 and the solidarity that is helping communities pick up the pieces.

On Wednesday, Kiryat Gat resident Israel returned to the main building housing the evacuees to speak with the management of Nir Oz. After the fanfare, he wanted to offer his services as a song leader for public singalongs, free of charge.

“You know, I play the guitar and I can organize singing events, especially for the senior citizens,” he told Maya Argov, an administrator working for Nir Oz.

He was one of several locals who trickled in on Wednesday to volunteer their time and talents for Nir Oz survivors.

Another was Noam Porat, a 62-year-old father of two who works as a tour guide, but offered his services gratis as a handyman in handwritten ads that he left in the lobbies of the six buildings where some 250 Nir Oz members — 80% of the surviving residents — are staying in 137 apartments. So far, no one has called, said a disappointed Porat. He grew up in Kiryat Gat but lived in Nir Oz as a soldier for a year, he said on Thursday.

Other offers of aid came from British Zionist charity JNF UK, which afforded the evacuees the use of 13 apartments it keeps at the Bemuna housing project in Kiryat Gat for new immigrants. Soltam, a kitchen utensils factory, donated cooking sets to each household. Plant nurseries brought house plants and herbs for the evacuees to take home and the municipality of Kiryat Gat put up welcome signs and provided each building with a fruit basket featuring a watermelon whose rind was marked with the logo of Nir Oz.

The sterile-looking lobby floor of the apartment building contrasted with the green Kibbutz Nir Oz logo, which depicts a huge flower looming over freshly plowed fields, a tractor, and a grain silo.

“The place is kind of a big construction site. It’s bizarre being here, you see the cranes and all of that. There’s hardly any green to be seen. It’s very different from the setting we built in Nir Oz. It’s no homecoming; it’s a new chapter. It’s not good or bad. We’re kind of on borrowed time here,” Dekel-Chen said about Karmei Gat, a new neighborhood whose 20-story buildings began being built in 2017 north of Kiryat Gat proper.

Eight of the apartments provided by the government to Nir Oz residents in Karmei Gat are for families that are presumed to be held hostage in Gaza, including Yarden and Shiri Bibas and their children, 4-year-old Ariel and his baby brother Kfir, who turned one year old this week.

An invading force of about 3,000 Hamas terrorists on October 7 murdered some 1,200 people in Israel. They abducted 240 people, of whom 129 are presumed to still be in Gaza – not all of them alive. Israel invaded Gaza in the aftermath of the attacks, killing thousands of terrorists, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Palestinian sources say at least 22,000 people have died in Gaza. The figures are not independently corroborated.

A uniform and densely built urban area, Karmei Gat echoes with the sound of construction going on in many of its unpopulated buildings — and some of the populated ones. It’s a neighborhood for young couples, many of them eligible for government subsidies for disenfranchised populations, but many others from middle-class backgrounds, Israel said.

Karmei Gat is very different socioeconomically from Nir Oz, an affluent kibbutz thanks to its paint factory, Nirlat.

“Religion isn’t exactly a mainstay of life in Nir Oz but it’s prominent throughout Kiryat Gat, including in Karmei Gat,” Porat noted. Politically, he added, Kiryat Gat and Nir Oz are a mirror image of each other. Right-wing parties received exactly 27 out of 239 votes in Nir Oz in the last election, compared to 80% of the electorate in Kiryat Gat, a growing city of about 57,000 residents where the average salary is 23% lower than the national one.

“None of it matters now,” said Israel of politics. “We are one people, facing a common enemy, joined by a single destiny.”

The visual contrast between Nir Oz and Karmei Gat is also stark.

Landscaping is far from done at Karmei Gat, and the traffic islands stand barren in the winter sun. Nir Oz, meanwhile, is one of the greenest kibbutzim in Israel thanks to the innovative irrigation, water conservation, and other horticultural developments made at Nir Oz’s Green Point botanical garden and ecological park, which was established 50 years ago.

No one is more aware of these differences than Ran Pauker, the botanical garden’s founder. An agile man who at 86 was still doing gardening work around the kibbutz before he was evacuated, Pauker sidesteps a question as to his feelings about moving into an apartment building.

“This is how I’m feeling: Deeply moved and profoundly grateful for how these outstanding people are welcoming us, embracing us,” Pauker says, extending his hand to shake Mordi Israel’s. “Thank you,” he tells Israel. “Circumstances aside, we’re so honored to have you as our neighbors.”

Back on the lobby floor, Nir Oz members are focusing on the mundane. Chaya Klingbail is trying to locate a stack of toilet paper rolls that had waited for the new arrival in a supply room but has vanished since. The members are hunkering down for at least a year, if not two.

Many of Nir Oz’s homes have been torched, said Dekel-Chen, who has returned to the kibbutz after the massacre to pick up some personal items from his home, which was not burned down. But even there, “everything smells of smoke, and death, to be honest,” he said.

Pauker is among the members who are eager to return to Nir Oz. He downplays the damage.

“A few months of hard work. The plants will also regrow. Like people, they’re resilient,” he said.

But this is not a consensus view, said Argov, Nir Oz’s resettlement officer.

“Most of Nir Oz is ruined. Torched. The feeling of being at home, the sense of safety, after the abandonment by the army and the state, has not been restored for all members,” Argov said, “and there are serious discussions now about the prospect of returning.”