In Sderot, near the Gaza Strip, residents begin to return home

Its 30,000 residents had deserted this town in southern Israel, very close to the Gaza Strip, after the Hamas attack on October 7.

Nearly two months after the massacres of October 7, Shalom returns to his home, in Sderot, a town in southern Israel, on the border with Gaza, where he was born 66 years ago. He doesn’t dare turn off the engine of his car, it’s been a long time since it was driven and he doesn’t know if it will start again. On the fourth and last day of truce and exchange between Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, Monday November 27, it is not yet the return to normal life, but it is at least the return to life in these cities which were evacuated.

When it was time to leave, Shalom refused to go to hotels reserved for refugees on the shores of the Dead Sea. He spent all this time with his family in northern Israel, in Kiryat Shmona, exactly in the area targeted by Lebanese Hezbollah. And he feels safer at home: “There, it’s much more dangerous than here. In the north, there are only explosions, missile interceptions or alarms. In Sderot, the situation is calmer. We have also reestablished the Dome iron. I’ve been here since this morning and I haven’t even heard a missile alarm.”

Sderot, ghost town

Sderot has not yet returned to being the city that Shalom knows so well. This resident returns there full of anger at those who allowed Hamas to arm and prosper, he says, including the generals he has seen marching through his town over the past 20 years. “The day the first homemade mortar shot fell, I say it should have been the last. And it has grown all these years, and again, and againremembers Shalom. The first mortar was the size of a rat, little by little they became as big as half a street lamp. Now a missile destroys a house.”

In Simon’s ghostly neighborhood, only the sound of drones flying over Gaza can be heard. One of her neighbors comes by from time to time to collect things. Apart from shopping, he only goes out to pray at the synagogue. “There is no one there, except these neighbors and a woman who arrived this week, that’s all. The whole neighborhood is empty, it’s sad”laments Simon.

“It’s really sad, it doesn’t make sense.”

Simon, resident of Sderot

in franciffo

Sderot continues to discover the horrors of October 7. A few days ago, the body of a Hamas fighter was extracted from the sewers, under the rubble of the city police station, now completely razed by the Israeli authorities.