A path lined with giant palm trees leads into the grounds of Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek, which overlooks the Jezreel Valley in the Lower Galilee. It is in this pastoral setting that nearly 420 members of the collective village of Nahal Oz, located 700 meters from the Gaza Strip, found refuge after escaping the October 7 massacres committed by Hamas. Eleven months after the national tragedy, these survivors still reside in this welcoming kibbutz.
Rescued with his family after eleven hours by his father, a retired general, the journalist from the left-wing daily HaaretzAmir Tibon, 35, has become their spokesperson. In The Gates of Gaza (published on September 19, by Christian Bourgois), this diplomatic correspondent alternates a personal account of the events of “Black Saturday” with an analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
September 2, the day of the interview he gave to L’Express, Israel is still experiencing dark hours. The day before, the IDF found the bodies of six hostages executed by Hamas in a Rafah tunnel. A general strike has been declared in support of the families of the captives who feel abandoned by the Netanyahu government. “I started this book at the end of November, with the certainty that all the hostages would return quickly,” says Amir Tibon. “In the meantime, despair has taken hold. We are waging the second longest war in the history of Israel since the War of Independence. But without David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin, or Moshe Dayan. There are no leaders left in this country today.”
L’Express: Ten years ago, when you decided to leave Tel Aviv to settle in Nahal Oz, you were called crazy…
Amir Tibon: A two-month war had just ended between Israel and Hamas… Some families had decided to leave the kibbutz and my wife and I chose to join them, driven by a Zionist ideal, a taste for adventure and the search for a community. The history of these collective villages – Nahal Oz, Be’eri or Kfar Aza, which were on the front lines of the massacres of October 7 – is not limited to this fateful date. We shared the conviction that it was important to live in these places located on the edge of Gaza, which mark the border of Israel and contribute to defending it. And I ask myself today the question of whether the current government still supports this mission.
What was the vision of the promoters of these communities?
The kibbutz movement, by deciding to create collective villages along the border, has made it clear where Israel begins and ends. Unlike the Gaza settlement project [NDLR : évacuées en 2005] or in the West Bank, which were built with the aim of erasing all borders. But when a country has no borders, this also affects society, the way of behaving, of dialoguing.
Paradoxically, it is along this border, where people live under constant threat, that the desire for peace has been strongly expressed.
Among my neighbors on the kibbutz who populate the story, there is for example Avishay Edri, very “hawkish” on security issues but who is also a volunteer in an organization that accompanies Palestinian patients in Israeli hospitals and perceives the humanity on the other side of the conflict; or Dani Rachamim, member of the pacifist movement “Shalom Akhshav” and reservist in the West Bank during the first Intifada. This is part of the Israeli paradox: we want peace with our neighbors but we must also defend ourselves. It is not binary. The reality is more complex.
In 1956, Moshe Dayan gave a famous speech in Nahal Oz, evoking the heavy “Gates of Gaza”: a text that resonates strongly…
The young kibbutz security officer had just been brutally murdered by Palestinians. Dayan, then Chief of Staff, delivered a very dark vision for our country, which disturbed some of the members. But it was under his leadership that Israel and Egypt signed peace agreements twenty-three years later. While the worst-case scenario occurred when Hamas perpetrated the atrocities of October 7. That day, Nahal Oz was to celebrate its 70th anniversary.
Your book is subtitled “a story of betrayal, survival and hope on the borders of Israel”, what betrayal is it?
I have been asked whether I was referring to the Gazan civilians, complicit in the attacks of October 7, or to the government that has not respected its moral contract. Everyone will have their own opinion. Hope, however, refers to the return of the hostages. But in the Hebrew edition, the most up-to-date, this word has disappeared. When I began working on the book, at the end of November 2023, in the wake of the brief ceasefire that allowed the release of a hundred hostages, we were certain that all the other captives would return quickly. But for several months, despair has taken hold: we have mainly recovered remains.
Six Israeli hostages were found dead on September 1
© / afp.com/Oren ZIV
Do you fear that the events of October 7 will be quickly erased from memory because of the war that followed?
No one should forget what happened that day on Israeli soil: the horrors committed, the heroism of the citizens and soldiers who sacrificed their lives. That is why I wrote this book, the plot of which also inspired a screenplay by the co-authors of the TV series Fauda [NDLR : sur les héros de la bataille de Nahal Oz]. Nor should anyone forget the weakness of our own leaders who failed to take responsibility for the greatest security failure in Israel’s history. The war that followed was terrible. As an Israeli citizen, I supported the war effort, at least in the first months of fighting. As a human being, it does not make me happy to see the level of destruction my own country has caused inside Gaza.
What will it take to convince kibbutz evacuees to return to live there?
It is not yet on the agenda: only about twenty members of Nahal Oz have returned to live there. The vast majority are preparing to do so by the summer of 2025, under certain conditions. First and foremost, the return of the hostages must be negotiated. There is no question of passing by the house of a kidnapped person who has not returned. These communities whose members have the courage to live near the border must also be able to benefit from the best services. Finally, soldiers, and not cameras, must be able to ensure their security.
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