Ready to rebuild

Nahal Oz looks and sounds like a building site. The smell of tar hangs in the air, and the beeping of work trucks is constant. A group of vol­unteers is putting together garden furniture for a sitting area on the communal lawn. Katya Soumrov, 47, is just one of the residents renovating her home.

Soumrov, who has lived in Nahal Oz since 2001, escaped with her life during Hamas’ attacks on the community on Oct. 7, 2023. She says God intervened to keep her safe. “It was a dividing moment. God gave us life from death,” she said. “Now we rebuild.”

It’s a sentiment shared by many in her community. Now, after more than two years of displacement, she and roughly half of Nahal Oz residents have come back to rebuild their lives.

Nahal Oz is a kibbutz—a communally run agricultural community—founded in 1951, not long after Israeli independence in 1948. It grows carrots, cotton, and wheat commercially and also runs a dairy farm and produces poultry. The independent pioneering spirit that birthed the kibbutzim across the country also forged the way for creating the new nation. That spirit remains, but the Hamas attack on Nahal Oz and other border kibbutzim has left its mark on the people fighting to rebuild their houses and their spirits.

“Oct. 7 is with us all the time,” said Beri Meirovich, who serves with Michal Magen on the Nahal Oz management team. Both survived the Hamas invasion in 2023. “We have neighbors who want to kill us,” Meirovich added. Across the western fence, toward Gaza, the sound of explosions occasionally still pierces the air. But Magen says the pull of the land and the oasis created in the desert continues. She describes driving through the green fields at sunset: “This place is like the Garden of Eden. We desperately want to believe that everything is OK.”

Not everyone has come back. Some unwilling to risk living so close to the Hamas-ruled territory have moved on, building their lives elsewhere due to a lack of security, fear for their children’s future, and trauma from the Oct. 7 attacks.

But 90% of the overall population in the Gaza envelope has returned, despite the ongoing danger. It’s a danger that the people of Nahal Oz have lived with for decades.

Since the early 2000s, Nahal Oz suffered under relentless mortar fire and rocket attacks from Gaza. The border was so close—just a half mile from the fence—that when bomb warnings would sound, residents only had seven seconds to reach shelter.

Over the years residents saw Hamas members training on the other side of the fence, heard them digging tunnels beneath their homes, and watched incendiary balloons devastate their crops.

On Oct. 7, Nahal Oz and the other communities of the Gaza envelope bore the brunt of the Hamas attack that left more than 1,200 people dead. The Gaza envelope is a strip of about 4.5 miles that stretches around Gaza. It includes 47 small agricultural communities of between 300 and 900 residents each, as well as the city of Sderot with its 38,000 inhabitants.

Now, with the Trump administration’s international Board of Peace, there is hope that the communities in the Gaza envelope can regain some sense of security. The board will oversee the Gaza Strip’s “demilitarization, reconstruction and civil administration,” although its efforts have yet to progress from rhetoric to reality.

The Nahal Oz management team hopes to draw people back to the kibbutz, especially the newer generation. Tanya Shoshanni, 54, is a tour guide, but during the last two years, with tourism at an all-time low, she coordinated help for terror victims. “Recovery is hardest for young people in their 20s and 30s,” she said. “Older generations have established patterns and duties to go back to.”

The challenge for a new generation is believing that the Gaza envelope’s future can look different from its past. Israel’s early leaders expected the borders to grow safer as the nation solidified over time, and they believed relations with their neighbors would eventually normalize. But from the beginning, it was never simple.

Daniel Gordis, commentator and scholar, told me that on Oct. 7, the social contract between the state of Israel and its citizens was broken: “The Zionist notion that the Jewish people as a people are secure in their ancient homeland was shattered.”

The current government desperately wants to show the opposite is true. Almost immediately after the Hamas attacks, the government began making moves to rebuild. On Oct. 19, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu established the Tkuma Directorate with a $6 billion budget over five years to spend in the envelope. Since then it has renovated public and residential buildings and rebuilt infrastructure, creating the conditions for residents to return.

The region now has 3,000 more residents than before the attack, and the goal is to double the population to 120,000 people by 2033. As the agricultural sector of Nahal Oz recovers and expands, the kibbutz aims to draw new families. Leaders hope to triple the number of homes, build a new facility for the elderly, open a secure kindergarten, and expand its sports facilities.

Gilad Yavetz, who owns renewable energy business Enlight, believes Nahal Oz could become a showcase for agricultural technology. His 23-year-old son, Yiftach, led the force that confronted the terrorists who stormed the community, preventing a larger massacre. Yiftach died during the battle.

Yavetz feels a duty to strengthen the community his son died to protect: “My son helped save 400 people. I want to follow his path.”

—Esther Arnusch is a freelance writer who lives in Israel