Yachts without pretense fill the marina of Ashkelon, a ghost city, 140,000 inhabitants, and nothing suggests imminent voyages despite the wind from nowhere and the sea calm. Who wants to sail twelve kilometers north of the Gaza Strip, from where intermittent explosions come?
“We lived like in Europe and now we act like Arabs. We don't like it, but there is no other." Tony is 31 years old and owns the only business open in this closed sports marina, apart from a pharmacy.
Ashkelon, Sderot and Ofakim were the cities most affected by the Hamas incursions and the rocket launches on October 7, so the vast majority of their inhabitants closed their homes and moved north. And those who stayed no longer seem the same.
Tony's business is a typical coffee shop. He could well consider himself a barista because he serves excellent coffee to the customer's taste, delighting in the cloud of foam and the addition of a glass of fresh water, courtesy of the house, perhaps dreaming that Ashkelon is Amalfi.
Ashkelon is not Amalfi and is attached to Gaza, some of whose inhabitants were expelled in 1948 from Al Majdal – today Ashkelon – towards the strip. Suddenly, the terror of October 7, 2023 made them understand – with blood and fire – that Gaza is not only not invisible and can be ignored, but it is very close and has the capacity to transform their lifestyle – with seas , cruise and pleasure boats, sushi restaurants and organic Italian ice cream – in the worst of hell. According to Israeli authorities, there are 120,000 internally displaced people.
“My cousin died in the attack – and he shows the photos, including the funeral. He died in his underwear. She was going through a divorce and was sleeping with two of her four children. The terrorists entered the kibbutz and she was able to kill two or three until they threw a grenade into the house. My cousin jumped on top to save his children, they came out unharmed. “A son who had gone fishing was also shot dead.”
Israel has been a land and welcoming home for Jews from half the world. Today, for the first time, Israelis born here, like Tony, are beginning to think – or have already decided – about emigrating, even though the business is working well for them. “I had never, never thought about it. But I have a little daughter and I don't want her to grow up here because I don't see the end, I don't see a solution. Where would I like to go? I like Holland a lot. “It is a country at peace.”
The streets and avenues of Ashkelon are deserted, even of police or soldiers. Those who didn't leave, many older people, barely leave the house. Every day alarms sound and, routinely, the missiles sent to them from Gaza are destroyed in the skies by the anti-aircraft shield. It doesn't matter: the inhabitants of these lands bordering the strip have lost the comfortable, predictable and Western life that those dozens of yachts and boats in the marina symbolize.
“My wife and two children have gone to a hotel near Tel Aviv. I open the animal food store – one of the few open. I do not know what we're going to do. Maybe we have lost technology, believing that it would prevent what happened. We lived so confident. When the war is over, these failures will have to be clarified,” explains Avi, 38, who has come to greet Tony and have a coffee.
Everyone assumes that the Israeli army will enter Gaza, cleanse the strip of Hamas terrorists and then... Nobody is clear about that after in Tony's cafe.
Another distant explosion. And another impeccable coffee that Tony serves to a middle-aged couple who say they are in love with Barcelona. This atrocious war and the one to come is paradoxical: never have two contenders been so far apart in their ways of life. Israel has all the technological sophistication in the world, its trains leave and arrive on time, couples travel to Barcelona and its security seemed perfect. Gaza is overcrowded, chaotic streets, laid cables and that underground tunnels that instill fear in the face of the ground invasion of the Israeli army.
Just a few kilometers from Ascalón.
