DISPATCH FROM ISRAEL | RICHARD SPENCER
Israeli towns near the Gaza border are full of fear and ghostly quiet
People leave home only to pick up supplies, as they wait out the war, Richard Spencer writes
A house ruined by fighting, in Kibbutz Ofakim, near the Gaza Strip
BERNAT ARMANGUE/AP
The Times
There is a ghostly air about the modern, low-slung towns close to Gaza in southern Israel. Basking in the late autumn sun, they feel like a Spanish village at siesta time in deep summer.
The silence is fear. Soldiers guard the outskirts. If the residents are here, they are waiting out the war in their neat concrete bungalows.
Tens of thousands have moved, temporarily, to Israel’s tourist resorts, home now to many residents of the towns and kibbutzim attacked by Hamas on October 7 all along the outside of the Gaza Strip.
Residents of Sderot evacuate with the war so close to their homes
EPA/MARTIN DIVISEK
Just a few have ventured to the shops. Some are themselves outsiders, refugees from even closer to the fighting zone. A number of kibbutzim and towns have been evacuated.
“Until Hamas are killed,
