Eli Sharabi said it all:
“I lived on Kibbutz Be’eri for 35 years, and we used to do a lot of things for our neighbors [the Gazans], such as taking them to hospitals in Israel from the border, giving them food from time to time and, a very, long time ago, they used to work on Be’eri, so we still had a connection with some of them,” said Sharabi, adding, “we really, really, really believed that we must live in peace with our neighbors.”
“But after all the things that happened in Be’eri – and some of the cruel things that happened in Be’eri were not just by Hamas but also by Gaza civilians – everything for me has changed,” he said.
“I didn’t meet any civilians in Gaza that were not involved in some way; so for me, now everybody’s involved, and I cannot see hope,” Sharabi said of the situation two years later.