They fled kibbutzim after Hamas attacked. Now, many Israelis must decide whether to go back
KIBBUTZ NAHAL OZ, Israel (AP) — For a few minutes on a recent afternoon, the sun-bathed silence that fills Nadav Tzabari’s neighborhood could almost be mistaken for peace.
Then shelling from Israeli tanks dug in across the fence line in Gaza erupts again, sending shudders through the vacated homes and overgrown gardens of this long-resilient farming community, emptied for months of nearly all its people.
“This is my house,” says Tzabari, a 35-year-old teacher, arriving at a small stucco building with a red tile roof near the center of Nahal Oz. It is so close to the bombed-out buildings on Gaza City’s eastern fringe that before Hamas swept in last October, residents could see their Palestinian counterparts driving through the streets.
Next door, Tzabari recalls, the attackers shot dead his 75-year-old neighbor and wounded her husband as the couple clung to the door of their safe room. Beyond an orange tree in his own yard, a tarp stretches across a gaping hole punched through the roof by one of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza in the months since. Inside, the blast layered every surface in dust and grit.
https://apnews.com/article/nahal-oz-kibbutz-israel-hamas-war-602abc399f73ac97ce19b81ddc13571a