A tattered Israeli flag waves on Israel’s southern border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
Maya Levin for NPR
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A tattered Israeli flag waves on Israel’s southern border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
Maya Levin for NPR
SHEFAYIM, Israel — Five months after the surprise Hamas assault on Israel on Oct. 7, and Israel’s punishing military response in Gaza, Israeli and Palestinian lives have been immeasurably changed.
The catastrophic conditions worsening daily in Gaza often overshadow the profound transformation Israelis have undergone.
The state of Israel’s society is crucial to understanding where the conflict might lead. Here are five ways Israel has been transformed in the last five months of war.
1. Israelis’ lives are on hold
Israelis remain in a state of suspended animation.
Following the Oct. 7 attack, 94,000 Israelis are still displaced, evacuated from their homes near the restive Gaza and Lebanon borders. Some 32,000 of them are still being put up in hotels across Israel, according to data from an internal Israeli government database provided to NPR.
It was only two weeks ago that Avidor Schwartzman, a survivor of the Oct. 7 attack, finally moved with his family from a room at the Shefayim Hotel, a resort north of Tel Aviv, to a new trailer park set up behind the hotel.
“It doesn’t feel like home, but it feels a lot more like a home,” he says.
Prefab temporary housing units provided to residents of Kibbutz Kfar Aza after the Oct. 7 attack, in Shefayim, Israel, Tuesday.
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Prefab temporary housing units provided to residents of Kibbutz Kfar Aza after the Oct. 7 attack, in Shefayim, Israel, Tuesday.
Maya Levin for NPR
Avidor Schwartzman, 38, stands in front of a trailer park for survivors of the Oct. 7 attack, in Shefayim, Israel, on Tuesday. His family was moved from a hotel to one of these prefab homes two weeks ago. His wife’s parents, Cindy and Igal Flash, were killed in the attack.
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Avidor Schwartzman, 38, stands in front of a trailer park for survivors of the Oct. 7 attack, in Shefayim, Israel, on Tuesday. His family was moved from a hotel to one of these prefab homes two weeks ago. His wife’s parents, Cindy and Igal Flash, were killed in the attack.
Maya Levin for NPR
Schwartzman’s trailer is one of eight prefab homes lined up in two rows, built on sand, housing broken families from the same devastated kibbutz, Kfar Aza. They include a young woman whose father was killed on Oct. 7; a family with a hostage still held in Gaza; and Schwartzman, whose in-laws were killed.
“I wish I could just, you know, erase it from my mind,” he says about the attack. “Not to wallow in everything, because there is so much sadness here, and so much grief.”
New homes are being built for the displaced residents of Kfar Aza, at another kibbutz near their old home. But Schwartzman says some families refuse to leave this trailer park of sadness until Israel strikes a deal with Hamas to free its remaining captives, around 130 Israelis, many believed to be alive.
It is not just the evacuated, the survivors and the hostages whose lives are on hold.
Read More: Israelis have changed after 5 months of war : NPR