The release in recent days of Israeli hostages from their hellish Gazan captivity has attuned the country to a grim and wrenching emotional experience, as the nation watches with horrified attention as hostages held by Hamas and other terror groups are released amid the tumult of Gazan crowds clamoring around the captives.
This terror and trepidation abates once the hostages are transferred, to be replaced by a tearful joy at the redemption of those who were kept in traumatic captivity for so long.
But these scenes are just one side of a multifaceted coin, the flip sides of which are the release of Palestinian security prisoners, including hardened terrorists with blood on their hands, and the return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to northern Gaza, under the terms of the ceasefire agreement Israel signed with Hamas.
This complex reality has profound significance in particular for residents of the western Negev region, otherwise known as the Gaza envelope, the cluster of kibbutzim, moshavim, towns and small communities that bore the brunt of the invasion and massacres perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
On Thursday morning, the pastoral beauty and tranquility of the Netiv Ha’asara moshav seemed a world away from the stomach-turning scenes in Jabalia and Khan Younis from where three Israelis and five Thai hostages were released.
Bougainvillea in garish pink and pastel orange ran riot across the white walls and green verges of the moshav, the branches of lemon trees weighed heavy with their bright yellow fruit, and blue skies crowned Netiv Ha’asara’s idyllic countryside location.

But Jabalia, whose Hamas rulers have apparently returned, lies just a short journey from the rural charm of Netiv Ha’asara and the home of one of its founders Moira Dror, whose house lies just a few dozen yards from the Gaza border itself.
On October 7, a small number of Hamas terrorists crossed over Gaza’s northern border, entered the moshav, and went house to house murdering 20 people in the community. Dror and her husband Gil hid in their safe room for ten hours, before escaping in their car.
Dror was watching her television Thursday morning with transfixed horror as Hamas paraded Agam Berger, the last female Israeli soldier held by the terror group, across a stage in front of a Gazan crowd, escorted by masked, armed terrorists and amid the ruins of Jabalia.
We want the hostages to come back at any price
But despite her vociferously expressed revulsion to Hamas’s treatment of Israel’s hostages, and her concern over the concessions made by Israel to the terror group, Dror is certain, without any doubt, that the ceasefire and hostage release agreement was the right thing to do.
“We want the hostages to come back at any price,” she insisted and said she very much hopes that the government follows through with the second phase of the deal as well to ensure that all the remaining hostages are released.
“That’s the only way the country can get back to something like normality.”
But she is under no illusions as to the price Israel is paying for the release of the hostages, nor the reality in Gaza, despite the “total victory” Israel was promised by its leaders in the wake of the October 7 attacks.
“Obviously Hamas is back in power in Gaza; in fact, they’ve never not been in power. Is that victory? It’s not victory,” she said calmly.

Netanel Sarrusi, a religious resident of nearby Sderot who has been involved in efforts by the local authority to rehabilitate the town following Hamas’s devastating attacks, was similarly despondent at the current reality of Gaza’s governance.
Like Dror, Sarussi hid with his wife and four children in their safe room for many hours on October 7 with the sounds of gunfire and explosions all around them, until they too deemed it safe to leave, and fled the town.
Hamas massacred some 50 civilians in Sderot on October 7, and another 20 police officers were killed fighting the terrorists for control of the town.
Sarrusi described the scenes witnessed on Thursday during the release of the hostages as “the trampling of the honor of the people of Israel.” And he said the image of Hamas in control in Jabalia, as well as the return of some 350,000 Gazans to northern Gaza in recent days — in line with a key pledge by Israel as part of the hostage release agreement — showed clearly that “the job has not been finished, and the promised victory has not been delivered.”
“We saw today how they nearly lynched [hostages] Gadi Mozes and Arbel Yehoud. We saw all these supposedly uninvolved innocents. We saw it also on October 7 with the people who came to loot, who rejoiced at the murder and rape of the girls, who rejoiced at the kidnappings,” he said.
In the last few days, “when we saw the pictures of Gazans going back to northern Gaza, for us those were very difficult scenes,” he continued.

Sarrusi said the depopulation of northern Gaza and the distancing of the Gazan population from the western Negev during the war had brought a sense of calm to the residents of Sderot. But now, “all of a sudden, the same people who were partners in October 7, with or without weapons, are back.”
They’re freeing murderers. This is an incredible tailwind for terrorism
For Sarussi, this is an unacceptable situation, and he says that to ensure the security of the region, and Israel in general, the war must be restarted and the IDF must re-enter northern Gaza and remain there permanently in order to defend the border communities.
“The residents here are really worried about the Gazans returning, I’m telling you. They’re freeing murderers. This is an incredible tailwind for terrorism. We have returned to October 7.”
Accepting the hard reality that returning to war would mean not all the hostages are released, Sarrusi said Israel should adopt tactics after the resumption of fighting “to make them crawl to us on all fours and say ‘take these hostages and leave us’.”
This would involve “turning off their electricity, turning off their water and their food, and bombing them ceaselessly,” he said starkly.

Several kilometers further south, Eric Isaacson, a long-time resident of the religious Kibbutz Alumim was, like Sarussi, highly concerned about the results of the agreement with Hamas, although he demurred from offering such extreme solutions as those proposed by the Sderot resident.
On October 7, several dozen Nukhba terrorists, Hamas’s “elite” commando unit, entered the kibbutz and massacred 22 of the foreign workers employed by Alumim in their living quarters, injured another nine, and took two hostage.
But the kibbutz’s security squad managed to repel the assailants, who were never able to enter the residential area of Alumim, and as a result were prevented from murdering the kibbutz members.
The terrorists did, however, do massive damage to Alumim’s agricultural infrastructure, destroying the dairy farm, burning down greenhouses, barns and chicken sheds with hundreds of thousands of chickens inside, and destroying cattle feed, feeding machines, silos, and other agricultural facilities.
They had a lust for blood which is hard to believe
“The sheer evil they planned is hard to imagine for people who don’t live here and haven’t seen the scale of destruction,” said Isaacson, who underlined that he was speaking very much in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the kibbutz.
“They had a lust for blood which is hard to believe. That is the primitive, disgusting nature of these people.”

Despite the lengthy war, Isaacson is worried that Hamas has not been defeated, and that the price Israel has paid for the ceasefire agreement with the terror group, releasing hundreds of convicted terrorists, may cost the country dear in the future, as previous deals have done.
“How many terrorists were given back for Gilad Shalit?” demanded Isaacson in reference to the 2011 deal in which over a thousand Palestinian prisoners were released for the return of the IDF soldier, including Yahya Sinwar, the now deceased Hamas leader and mastermind of the October 7 attacks.
“We’ve done exactly the same [now]. We’ve released more Sinwars. People who murdered in the most horrible way, people who are filled with hate. We gave a thousand for Shalit. What did they learn? They learned that next time they’ll capture 250.”
Despite his dismay at the mass release of Palestinian terrorists, Isaacson said he did not know what the alternative was if Israel wanted to secure the release of its hostages.
But he insisted that the government now has an even greater responsibility to ensure the security of the Gaza border communities.
And Isaacson has no faith that the blows sustained by Hamas will create a long-term change in how it acts, pointing to comments made by Hamas’s leadership that it will continue to fight Israel and carry out more October 7-style atrocities.
“We’ve set them back to an extent, but only to an extent. Gazans aren’t saying Hamas is wrong; nothing has changed in their behavior. We need to change ours, and learn from our mistakes.”
Furthermore, he does not feel secure. “I don’t feel safe, how can I feel safe? Because I extrapolate from [the] Gilad Shalit [deal], and we’ve just released hundreds of murderers who hate with every cell of their body.”

Isaacson acknowledged wearily that there were no easy solutions to the situation, stating that “generations” of Palestinians have been taught to hate Jews, and that only “re-education” over the course of at least two generations would reverse the situation.
This can only come about by changing the governance of Gaza, he said, but he is also at a loss for how that might happen, including because of the realities witnessed on the ground since the ceasefire agreement took hold.
Despite the severe trepidation many western Negev region residents plainly feel with the ceasefire agreement and all it entails, all those who spoke with this reporter expressed a sense of resilience, determination, and defiance in the face of the difficult reality that has now developed so near to their homes.
Sarrusi spoke enthusiastically about the “demographic growth” in Sderot, which he said has not only recovered its pre-October 7 population but grown beyond it, describing it as “a miracle.” He compared the expansion to prosperity enjoyed by the Biblical figure of Isaac in the same region, thousands of years ago.
“There are new neighborhoods, there is great activity in the fields of culture, education and others, and there is great development,” he said animatedly.
Meanwhile, Dror was adamant she would never leave her home in Netiv Ha’asara despite the risks, which she openly acknowledged, and her incredibly close proximity to Gaza itself, which she can easily see from her house.
Dror and her husband returned to Netiv Ha’asara just six months after the Hamas assault, two of only four residents in the deserted moshav at the time, after rejecting the use of state-paid rented accommodation in Ashkelon.
“It wasn’t my home. I need my home, the smell of my home. My resilience is here in the house and not anywhere else,” she said fervently.
This land is in the State of Israel, I’m not leaving here
Dror has refused to put bars on her home or build a wall around it, as a number of Netiv Ha’asara residents have done, saying that she trusts the army to protect her and that if she were to fortify her house she might as well just leave.
“This land is in the State of Israel, I’m not leaving here. People don’t pack their bags when there are terror attacks in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv either,” she pointed out. “I’m not giving Hamas that victory.”
Isaacson was of a similar mind.
“I don’t give in to evil. I have moral standards. You cannot give in to evil. I spent 58 years trying to create in this country. I was a farmer for 28 years; this is my land,” he said, citing the same Biblical account as Sarussi of how Isaac flourished in the region.
“That was 4,000 years ago. I live in this land. How can I even think of giving it up? What would be the cost of that?”
“What happens if you run away? They chase you. What happens if you stay and fight? You have a chance!”