‘None of us are really alive’: displaced Israelis cling to hopes of normality

Jonathan Dekel-Chen in the hotel where he is living with 9 other family members in just two rooms – Melanie Swan

Across Israel, almost a quarter of a million people displaced from their homes by the war with Hamas are clinging to any semblance of normality.

In hotels from Eilat and Tel Aviv to Tiberias, the rituals of Jewish life, like weekly sabbath prayers and dinners, are taking place in lobbies, while usually joyous celebrations continue amid the backdrop of mourning for the victims of the October 7 attacks, all far from home in strange surroundings.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen is one of the 249,263 Israelis who had to leave their homes.

His community, Kibbutz Nir Oz, was devastated by the marauding terrorists. At least 85 of his neighbours were murdered and 75 more taken hostage, including his son, Sagui, 35, who since being captive in Gaza, has become a father for the third time.

“Our granddaughter is a ray of light within utter darkness which is our world right now. The anchorless way of our lives now overshadows everything,” he says from his hotel room in Eilat, where his family of 10 have been sharing two rooms.

“There is nothing in daily life here that represents life on a cooperative farm,” he says of his life now lost, the freedom of his young grandchildren running and playing around the farms now confined to hotel lobbies and corridors. “There’s nothing I don’t miss about my life. We are living as refugees in our own country. We can’t even grieve because most of the bodies of our deceased are held by Hamas.”

He managed to salvage only a few items from his destroyed home – his grandchildren’s toys and artwork, photo albums, trinkets he had since a young boy, and a couple of items of clothing that weren’t completely destroyed. Decades of memories and family heritage have vanished.

Yuval Haran was living on Kibbutz Be’eri before October 7, when seven members of his family were taken hostage, and three other family members murdered, including his father. Since then, six have been returned in negotiations but his brother-in-law, Tal, 38, is still in Gaza.

Yuval Haran and his partner at the site of his destroyed family home at Kibbutz Be’eri

In the nearly 100 days since October 7, when around 130 friends and neighbours in his community were murdered, he has lived in eight different homes after the kibbutz was razed.

“I haven’t even begun to mourn the people we have lost because we are still thinking about the people we can save,” he says of October 7, when 1,200 mostly civilians were murdered and at least 240 more taken hostage. “Nothing is normal. We are all breathing but none of us are really alive.”

Two weeks ago it was his 37th birthday, one of the most difficult days so far. “It was the first birthday I knew I wasn’t going to get a hug or phone call from my father. I really couldn’t ignore the things I lost and the people who weren’t going to call me,” he says.

British-Israeli Deby Sharon is sub-letting her son’s apartment in the southern town of Be’er Sheva while he serves on the front lines in Gaza. “We miss our house, we miss the feeling of getting up in the morning and not thinking where will I be today, where will I be tomorrow, asking ourselves will we ever feel safe again,” she says of her home in Moshav Yated, a small farming community on the Gaza periphery.

“I have this drama every morning, asking how long it will be before I look through the window again and think how beautiful the lemon tree looks and wondering how many lemons I will get this year.”

The communes on Gaza’s border have been faced with an existential crisis. Many of their Left-leaning residents believed Israelis and Palestinians could live in peace as neighbours. They offered Gazans well-paid work in conditions far better than in Gaza, and many volunteered as drivers for the 600 Gazan patients who, until October 7, received life-saving medical treatments in Israeli hospitals.

The Shusterman family in their temporary accommodation after being evacuated from their home in the village of Regba near the Lebanese border – Miro Maman/Reuters

“People that were once willing to live in an area where rockets were regularly thrown on them are no longer willing to do that now,” Mrs Sharon said. “We all believed it would get better. Now, Hamas says October 7 is just the start and we believe them.”

Thousands of those in hotels are paid for by the government. Some of the displaced, like Mrs Sharon, are given a daily stipend of 200 shekels a day for adults, and 100 for children, though thousands do not qualify for the support.

How long the financial aid will last is still to be seen amid a war which the Israeli government has said will likely continue for months.

Mrs Sharon is living with her family and two big dogs which need regular walks in a town which continues to be bombarded from Gaza. “I feel I have no ground to stand on. My life stopped on October 7. I can pass a shop and see people buying stuff and I think, ‘oh normal people, one day I will be like them’.”

Cooking in the apartment offers a momentary escape. “Even when we don’t feel like it, cooking is the smell of home. I catch myself stirring something and imagining myself doing it at home, using my own saucepan. It gives me a good feeling that feels like light,” she says.

She and her husband try each week to meet up with at least one of their children and meet other evacuated friends to have drinks. “Even if we say ‘what are we drinking to in the hell of this life’, we still say cheers to a better life, to remember what that life feels like, so we have something to hang onto.”

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