Sderot after the Hamas attack: When fear is always there

Sderot, near the Gaza Strip, was brutally attacked by the terrorist organization Hamas on October 7th. Now the residents are trying to return to normality – but how can that work?

Anyone who wants to drive to Sderot these days has to pass through an Israeli army checkpoint. The entire city is monitored with cameras – and the live images can be seen in Avi Ezra’s operations center. The room is specially secured, and Ezra opens it with a chip card. He is the head of security for Sderot. On October 7th he experienced a real nightmare.

When the alarm sounded, he rushed to the operations center. “At first we thought it was just a rocket alarm. We didn’t think terrorists had entered the city,” says Ezra. But then more and more calls came in. At some point, Ezra and his colleagues saw pickup trucks and heavily armed terrorists on the surveillance screens.

As in other places on the border with the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers and police tried to push back the terrorists in Sderot. At the beginning they were completely overwhelmed. Because of a Jewish holiday, the Sderot police station was sparsely staffed. Palestinian militants apparently knew exactly where it was and attacked.

The battle for Sderot lasted more than 24 hours. The police station was so badly damaged in the fighting that it has now been demolished. More than 20 police officers and more than 50 civilians were murdered in Sderot alone on October 7th and 8th. In total, the terrorists killed 1,200 people on these days.

“This attack was something completely new,” says Ezra. “I thought we were in a movie. It was completely unreal what we were seeing before our eyes.”

Armed soldiers in schools

Almost five months later, Ezra tries to spread confidence at a school in the city. About 25 teachers are sitting in the science room. The room has small windows with metal covers. It is also used as a bunker. If there is a rocket alarm, the students have a maximum of 15 seconds to get to safety. Just a few days ago there was another alarm. The city’s playgrounds are mostly deserted.

But now schools are reopening. Ezra says that there will be an armed soldier in every school. A teacher says: “When I hear all this, I don’t feel like it anymore.”

Dganit Hargov wants to support her colleagues and, like security guard Ezra, exude confidence these days. The counselor is talking about October 7th when she thinks she hears something and jumps. “We residents of Sderot live on alert. When there are noises, it immediately makes you jump,” says Hargov. Some children would no longer be able to calm down.

That’s the challenge these days: The teachers want to be there for the students – and are afraid themselves. October 7th, says the teacher, changed the people in Sderot. Parents of students were also murdered.

“The fear is always there”

Sderot has around 30,000 inhabitants. There were predictions that by the end of the decade there could be almost twice as many. But now large parts of the city are empty. Only one in three residents has returned so far. Security officer Ezra says the city is now much safer than it was before October 7th. The teacher Hargov also speaks of a kind of feeling of security. But the fear, she admits, is always there: “The Gaza Strip is here, we can wave over.”

The Israeli army’s attacks on the Gaza Strip can often be heard in Sderot. The army has been bombing the area for months. According to their own statements, in response to rockets from militant Palestinians and to destroy the terrorist militia Hamas.

At least 30,000 people are believed to have been killed in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health. Most of them civilians. The United Nations considers this figure to be credible.

“In the Gaza Strip there is only terror”

Or Friedman has his hands full this afternoon. There are a lot of orders and he’s taking an olive pizza out of the oven. His pizzeria was almost completely destroyed by a rocket on October 13th. Friedman rebuilt it. The pizza maker says he does believe that there are people in the Gaza Strip who are against the war.

But then he changes his attitude: “You can’t defeat terror,” says the Israeli. “And it looks like there is only terror there. The civilians are also terrorists because they either have hostages or rockets or ammunition in their homes.” That’s why he believes, as much as he is sorry, that “the Gaza Strip must be wiped out.” The residents of the Gaza Strip, says the pizza chef, have to be taken to countries like Turkey or Egypt.

Sderot was already a conservative city before October 7th. The left-wing, idealistic Israeli peace movement is not at home here. The terror of October 7th led to a conviction among most residents: peace with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is simply not possible.

What does Friedman feel when he looks at the almost completely destroyed north of the Gaza Strip? When he hears about children going hungry there? “They brought this on themselves,” he says.

After October 7th, the human distance between the pizza maker and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip could not be greater. It is only about two kilometers from Sderot to Gaza.