HS in Israel | The small village of Shuva miraculously survived the massacre by Hamas

Gaza border area

Near At the border of Gaza, a group of representatives of the international press follow the scene of world politics on the roadside.

In the field ahead are Israeli howitzers with their barrels pointing west, towards the Gaza Strip. From time to time the howitzers rattle and the cameras go off. In the background, on the horizon, you can see Gaza, with large columns of smoke rising from it.

Soon there will be a crowd.

“Terrorists detected!” the Israeli soldiers who come to the scene warn the observers. The cars start and go towards the next shooting location.

By terrorists, the Israelis were referring to the Palestinian gunmen who came from Saturday across the Gaza border into Israel. They killed hundreds of civilians in summary executions. A similar massacre has not been experienced in Israel’s history, despite the country’s violent past.

Thousands of Israelis have already died in the war that started on Saturday, both those killed by Hamas gunmen and those killed in Gaza by Israel’s bombings.

According to the UN, approximately 260,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to leave their homes due to the bombing. Israel has declared a complete blockade of the already blockaded Gaza Strip. It means the country’s defense minister by Yoav Gallant including the fact that no electricity, water or gas is supplied to the area.

The more than two million already poor inhabitants of the densely populated Gaza will feel the effects of the Hamas attack heavily.

Gaza in the surrounding fields you get a good idea of ​​Israel’s military power.

In the fields and in the fields, you can see a huge number of Israeli howitzers, tanks and other heavy military equipment. Tens of thousands of troops have been brought to the border, and 300,000 reservists have been called up for the operation. The war is full scale.

Already on Tuesday, Israel announced that it has gained control of the Gaza border region. Nevertheless, it seems that individual Hamas fighters are still on the move in the area, as the observers who were on the side of the roads on Wednesday were able to notice.

Even the night before, the Israelis also fought in the area of ​​the coastal city of Ashkelon with several gunmen. At the end of the fighting, three – apparently Hamas – gunmen were killed.

What the closer you get to the Gaza border, the quieter the roads become. There are plenty of huge greenhouses in the area, which are now neglected. Bananas, tomatoes, watermelons.

In many places, the Israeli soldiers have set up roadblocks on the roads that lead to the villages in the border area. The ones that were attacked by Hamas gunmen and about which several horror stories have been told about the indiscriminate killing of civilians.

Despite the roadblocks, the Israeli soldiers’ security zone around Gaza is by no means without gaps. Driving along the field road, you can easily reach the gates of the deserted villages, where Israeli special forces soldiers keep watch.

The gates to the border villages do not open easily. Earlier this week, however, Israel organized a trip for the international press to the kibbutz village of Kfar Aza, where atrocities committed by Hamas were revealed.

“The gunmen killed civilians and cut off the heads of some. That’s gross to watch. We must remember who the enemy is and what our mission is. There is one right side to justice, and the whole world must stand by us,” said the deputy commander who led the Kfar Aza liberation operation David Ben Zion who was on a journalist’s trip the BBC by.

According to Ben Zion, the Hamasites who killed families and even babies were “exclusively a jihadist machine that kills everyone”.

Now at the gate of Kfar Aza, a soldier of the Israeli military says that outsiders have no business in the village. The crime scene investigators still have work to do, and besides, there is no one in the village. Residents have been killed, kidnapped or evacuated.

On the side of the road lies the supposedly heat-swollen body of a Hamas gunman. Not everything the world wants to see about the events of the place yet.

Nearby In the small village of Shuva – on the other side of the melon plantations – it was much luckier, because the Hamas gunmen could not reach here.

“Our village survived like a miracle. Not a single bullet hit here,” says a resident of Shuva Kobi Trabelsi.

Although Shuva is only a few kilometers from the Gaza border and nearby Kfar Aza, Trabelsi says he was not daunted by the Hamas attack.

“I didn’t have time to be afraid, I had to protect my family,” says the father of five.

Trabelsi tells how after Saturday’s attacks, villagers came from nearby villages to seek refuge in Shuva.

“This was like a hospital. Many sought help here, and corpses that had been burned and mutilated were also brought here.”

He says he also saw the bodies of the babies who were killed.

“Those people had not been killed, they had been slaughtered.”

In the process when Trabelsi tells about the events of the weekend at the gate of his home village, in a nearby field Israeli field guns are mowing down Gaza. The coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians has proven to be impossible in the past, but would there still be a chance for peace in the future?

“Hopefully, after all this, the world will understand which nations bring good to the world and which do not. The time for empty talks and negotiations is over. This was hopefully the last time we would witness the murders committed by Hamas. You can’t negotiate with butchers.”

His brother comes in to talk about how all the people of Shuva know many who died in the Hamas attack. The men are convinced that Israel’s future has now taken a new direction.

“Of course, I wish from the bottom of my heart that the whole world would be like Finland. But unfortunately it is not,” says Trabelsi.