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Photo: Gadi Kabalo
The soldiers in Kfar Aza
Photo: Gadi Kabalo

After fighting in Gaza, IDF soldiers move to border communities

Nahal soldiers move to Kibbutz Kfar Aza to help community get back on its feet in the wake of Operation Protective Edge.

While Israel Defense Forces troops were busy destroying a terror tunnel between Gaza's Saja'iyya neighborhood and Kibbutz Nahal Oz, Sergeant Ofek Glazer went out to work as usual in the community garden of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a stone's throw away from the very same tunnel.

 

 

Last summer, Glazer saw action as a combat soldier in Gaza; now, as part of their Nahal military service, he and 11 of his fellow fighters have taken up residence in the Gaza-border community and are trying to help the kibbutz get back onto its feet in the wake of Operation Protective Edge.

 

"We really wanted to do this this work, to strengthen the kibbutzim in the area," Glazer says. "We looked into it ourselves and we asked the United Kibbutz Movement, which is responsible for the project, how to get here."

 

Photo: Gadi Kabalo
Photo: Gadi Kabalo

Didn't your parents think you were crazy? After fighting in Protective Edge, don't you deserve a break from this area?

"No, they are very encouraging," says Glazer, who works in the community garden and is also involved in educational activities with high school students. "It was important for us to come to a place like this and do educational work. The danger exists, but it doesn't deter us at all. People live here after all, so why not?"

 

Photo: Gadi Kabalo
Photo: Gadi Kabalo

 

Are the people here traumatized?

"It's very hard to see," says Ziv Ganor, who works in the kibbutz's groundskeeping department and is also coordinates a project involving activities among the community's youth and its elderly residents. "I noticed that when someone goes by on a tractor or some other noisy vehicle, the small children get a fright and block their ears. That was one of the welcomes I experienced; it was terrible."

 

"We arrived on the very same day that the entire kibbutz returned, so we saw everything as it was – with the holes made by the rockets that hit some of the homes," says Lior Gruner, who works with Glazer in the garden and with the high-school students. I felt I was in the right place. Suddenly my being there was of significance; and together with the community that has returned, we will try to do what needs to be done."

 

Shahar Rabinowitz grew up in Metsuba, on the border with Lebanon, and knows all too well what the Gaza-border residents have been through. "Katyusha rockets were something I grew up with," he says. "When I got here, it felt like I was meeting myself from seventh grade. We also grew up in bomb shelters and went on holiday to Tel Aviv to relax. I can understand the people here."

 

Photo: Gadi Kabalo
Photo: Gadi Kabalo

 

A tunnel from Gaza to Kibbutz Nahal Oz has just been destroyed. How does that make you feel?

Glazer: "It puts things into perspective. It's funny that you talk about fear. When we were there, in Gaza, the mortars that reach here sometimes rained down on us in the dozens, endlessly – from above, from below, on the house in which we were and all around us. We've already grown indifferent because you get used to it."

 

In retrospect, where you feel more at ease – here without weapons, or in Gaza with your weapons and all?

Ganor: "It's strange for me sometimes, but I'm a little complacent. I don't feel traumatized like the people here on the kibbutz. It's been very quiet here ever since we arrived."

 

"When I got here, I missed the action a little. I missed the shooting range exercises, the patrols, the guard duty and the weapons," confesses Tuval Elias from the IDF's Caracal Battalion, which is stationed along the Egyptian border.

 

Will you still be here in 50 years?

Glazer: "Please God, we will all still be here together."

Elias: "Without making any commitment, I see myself studying in the area and continuing to live in Kfar Aza. Raising children is still a long way off for me, but I'd be happy to stay here."

 


פרסום ראשון: 02.21.15, 23:36
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