From Israel to Gaza: A Rare Call Lays Bare Shattered Ties, Deep Suspicions

It sounded like a conversation between two old acquaintances anywhere. How are you? How’s the family?

Finally, David Doron asked the man on the other end of the line what he was doing, eight months after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.

“I’m just basically sleeping all day. I’m not doing anything. I’m keeping out of sight,” he replied.

When asked where he was, the Palestinian man said he was somewhere between Rafah and Khan Yunis in Gaza. Doron was making the call from his Volkswagen SUV in Kfar Aza, an Israeli kibbutz where at least 65 people were killed and 20 taken hostage on that October day.

The rare conversation, in Hebrew was a sign of the ties between Israelis and Palestinians that were broken and may never be rebuilt as opinions have hardened on both sides as a result of the attack by Hamas and Israel’s ensuing offensive into the Gaza Strip.

Some 1,200 Israelis were killed in the attack and 251 were taken hostage — with more than 100 still unaccounted for. More than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to Hamas authorities who do not say how many of those were combatants.

The Palestinian man had worked for Doron for decades, doing agricultural labor. Unusually, despite the war, they had kept in touch, with the man in Gaza making multiple unsuccessful requests for money.

That day, Doron probed a bit farther than usual.

“I came to check up on Kfar Aza, what, what you guys did to me,” Doron said. He hasn’t been living on the kibbutz since the attack eight months before, but periodically comes to check on the slow progress of rebuilding.

“I hate them [Hamas]—and he cursed them,” the Palestinian man said, “To which Doron said, ‘Be careful, don’t curse them too much or they’ll hear you.'”

“I don’t care!”

Newsweek is not publishing the name of the Palestinian man for security reasons and did not speak to him independently.

“You know, so, uh, he’s, uh, he’s not for Hamas, or at least he says it,” translator Shachar Gal said. “He’s very depressed.”

After the call ended, Gal tried to sum up what else had been said, and a bit of what was unspoken, with Doron nodding.

“In a way [Doron] kind of blames his friend. He basically has a problem in their friendship because how could [the man in Gaza] not know? I mean, like, why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you know something? Couldn’t you warn us?” Gal said.

It is a question that others in Israel are also asking. Were the Palestinian men and women they employed or worked with every day for years somehow complicit in the killings and kidnappings? Israeli intelligence has said it believes some of them were.

While the outside world often sees two monoliths separated by barbed wire and hate, the truth on the ground is that the lives of Israelis and Palestinians have often been intertwined—if not on equal footing.

Palestinian labor has gone into the building of Israel and picked the nation’s crops. Palestinian Muslims have worked alongside Jews in the fields and depending on the ebbs and flows in the conflict, have at times gone into joint ventures together.

Before October 7, Kfar Aza was known for its liberalism and its enthusiasm for peace with their neighbors across what is less than a mile gap in Gaza. Doron, known by the affectionate nickname Dudi, was one of the kibbutz’s leaders.

He was at home on the day of the Hamas attacks. He and his wife survived by staying in their house’s safe room, or “mamad.” The rooms, which many houses near the border with Gaza have, are made of strengthened concrete and have steel doors.

Fighters burst into his home, as is shown in a 20-second video clip from a security camera positioned to watch the door and tried to lure Doron out. They spoke in Hebrew and claimed to be the Israel Defense Forces come to rescue the family. It was only 30 hours after the attack began that Doron heard a familiar voice calling him by name. It was his brother-in-law, an active-duty IDF officer who had come to the rescue.

As Doron remained barricaded inside, the Palestinian fighters killed more than 60 people of the approximately 760 people who were on the kibbutz and took 20 people hostage, five of whom have since been returned, he said.

The heaviest part of the attack was centered around the part of the kibbutz that young people—especially couples—lived. Every home was damaged, and signs with people’s faces were draped outside the homes where they had once lived. There is an eerie feeling to the place, even in the brightest possible daylight. It shows signs of becoming another pilgrimage spot in a country known for them.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative American thinktank, had sent its own team for a tour of the destruction, and the Israeli government had given them two soldiers to keep them safe and to tell the story of the struggle at the kibbutz, which went on for three days before the last of the intruders was killed.

The war has left deeper divisions than ever between Israelis and Palestinians and dimmed prospects for the two-state solution — a Palestinian state alongside Israel — that has been much touted by U.S. President Joe Biden, among other world leaders.

By the end of 2023, a poll showed Israeli support for the two-state solution at 25 percent. A recent Palestinian poll showed only 32 percent support for the idea. The vast majority supported fighting.

Doron and his family have not decided whether to return to Kfar Aza. There is a struggle with the government over who will pay for what parts of the cleanup and reconstruction—and then there’s simply the fact that Gaza looms less than one mile away from Doron’s home. From the road behind his house, peer through the trees and you’ll see the gray buildings of the enclave on the horizon.

So, what needs to happen next for Kfar Aza to move on? A total victory over Hamas in Gaza as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged?

No, eight months of war is too much, Doron said, and he was clear that the hostages held in Gaza need to be the government’s top priority.

“We have to bring them home, quickly.”

But when asked what he saw as a permanent solution for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, he shrugged.

“We’ve lived with them for 100 years, and we’ll live with them for 100 more.”