Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke of “a long and difficult” conflict as he announced the second stage of the war against Hamas on Saturday evening.
For the mourners attending the funeral of Lili and Ram Itamari in a kibbutz close to the Gaza Strip, however, the war has already dragged painfully on for three long weeks.
Lili, 63, and Ram, 56, lived in Kfar Azza, the scene of one of the worst Hamas massacres of 7 October. Hundreds of armed men from the militant Islamist group burst through the border fence and murdered them in their home, hours after they had marked the festival of Simchat Torah with a dinner party with their friends.
On Sunday, the survivors of Kfar Azza and friends, neighbours and colleagues converged on the small agricultural community in the Gaza border area to bury the couple whose bodies were formally identified only three days ago.
As the sounds of jets roared overhead and artillery rumbled in the distance, the mourners were advised of what they should do in the event of a rocket attack: lie in the sand and cover their heads with their hands.
The eulogies told the story of where Israel is today, only a handful of weeks since the Hamas massacre: a profoundly wounded country bracing itself for yet more loss as armour and infantry gather in the neighbouring fields ahead of a widely expected major ground invasion.
The speakers talked of grief and vowed never to “forgive or forget” how families like the Itamaris had been “abandoned” by the government, which has been accused of failing to come to the aid of people after the Hamas attacks and of focusing resources on the occupied West Bank in the months before. They described ordinary lives cut short and the struggle to comprehend what had happened.
As mourners embraced and cried, quietly watched over by army sentries placed among the trees overlooking the little cemetery, Ram’s father, Amatzia, said: “The two graves here were meant for us. You should be crying for us. We cannot understand how they were abandoned. Or forgive or forget that.”
“What kind of wild animal devoured them?” asked another eulogist, Ram’s boss. “Animals in the wild do not do that.” Echoing Ram’s father, he added: “It is so difficult to understand.”
For others, the tenor was shocked and tearful. “It is a time for radical change,” said Shlomtzion Cohen, the principal of the school where Lili had worked. “It is the time for revenge. It is time to put this to an end. It is time to bring back our students. Your students.”
In the communities along the Gaza border where Hamas’s murderous rampage occurred, how “to put this to an end” is the most pressing question. Not just this war – the fifth round of serious conflict since 2008 – but the threat across the south.
For some, it is an open question whether Israel’s leaders are equipped to do it. In her small supermarket in the town of Sderot close to the Gaza border, Nadia Korndaev, aged 68, is sceptical.
Sderot was one of the locations targeted by Hamas. The police station where Hamas holed up as the security forces finally arrived is now gone, bombed and bulldozed into nothing.
In the mostly deserted streets, impacts of Hamas rockets can be seen in walls and vehicles.
In Korndaev’s shop a tear is visible in the ceiling from shrapnel where a rocket landed just outside on 13 October. She was at the meat counter when another fragment hit the fridge she was standing next to.
“I’ve been here 20 years through all the rocket strikes,” she said. “But I never thought they would come in. Who could think that? They killed people who I knew.”
And while Netanyahu spoke of a “second war of independence” when announcing the escalating military campaign, Nadia, who once supported him, is not so sure. “I don’t really trust it. We don’t know how to resolve this problem.
“I hope there won’t ever be another war. If Bibi [Netanyahu’s nickname] is gone, maybe there won’t be another war.”
She is uncertain, too, of the wisdom of sending Israeli soldiers into Gaza. “I would rather we were bombing [Hamas] from outside than sending our kids in.”
Nevertheless, at petrol stations, bases and in the camps and mustering areas among the open sandy fields along Gaza’s border, Israel’s soldiers are gathering for what many see as a now inevitable larger invasion.
Many Israelis are unsure of the precise goals or the desired outcome of the offensive.
The Haaretz columnist Amos Harel compared the situation to the dense fog that enfolded Gaza on Saturday morning. “IDF forces entered the Gaza Strip on Friday night under a heavy fog,” he wrote. “That was true not only of the weather, but also of Israel’s intentions, even after the clouds dispersed on Saturday morning.
“Israel is not revealing the scope or goal of the ground forces entering Gaza. Officially, Israel is saying only that the ground operation was expanded. The defence minister and IDF chief of staff said that this was a new stage in the war, which would be a long one.”
While past conflicts have prompted strong social solidarity behind the army and politicians, this time Netanyahu’s leadership rings false for some.
In the financial daily Calacalist, one of Israel’s most prominent businessmen, Amnon Shashua, the head of self-driving auto technologies firm Mobileye, called for the immediate departure of Netanyahu and his government, accusing him of “failures, dissonance and incompetence” since the Hamas attack.
“We must cut our losses and do it quickly,” Shashua wrote. “The only solution to the current situation in Israel is to replace the government, and it needs to happen immediately.”
For now, the war grinds on. For how long, at what cost and how successfully, no one in Israel can answer.
