Until the tragedy of October 7, Aya Chahal had never thought of leaving her busy life in the bustling metropolis of Tel Aviv to move south to a farming life on a kibbutz near the Gaza border.
“It wasn’t the future I had planned for myself,” Chahar told CNN.
But after Hamas-led militants breached the border fence in 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages inside Israel, Chahal felt the need to help rebuild the kibbutzim, which had been ravaged by attacks and then emptied.
A kibbutz is a type of Jewish agricultural commune built on socialist principles. Much of the area along Israel’s border with Gaza is made up of kibbutzim, communities that have played an important role in the national psyche throughout the country’s existence.
“What happened there made me understand that there is no way to live my life without connecting it to what is happening here,” Shahar said.
The 29-year-old is one of about 2,500 new residents who have moved to the kibbutz near the Gaza border since October 2023, according to data from the Tekma Administration, the Israeli government agency responsible for rebuilding communities in the region.
The new arrivals join around 62,000 returnees who are gradually returning to their homelands after a long period of displacement during which the region was declared a military closed area.
Some resisted the war and returned to their homelands, while others who had never lived there before moved to help repopulate the emptied kibbutzim.
Shahar joins a group of peace activists aiming to revive the left-wing movement that first flourished in Israel in the 1950s.
The Hashomer Hatzair movement “Youth Guards” was founded in Eastern Europe on the eve of World War I, based on a Zionist ideology that supported socialism and agriculture, and recognized that life on a kibbutz was the correct way of life.
With the help of the Kibbutz Movement Reconstruction Fund, which specializes in supporting and guiding community recovery, approximately 100 members of Hashomer Hatzair have started a new life on a kibbutz just a few miles from the Gaza border.
Hashomer Hatzair’s spokesperson, Yalden Machol, said the movement called for an end to the fighting and a future of coexistence.
“We need to get a peace deal. That would be the best thing ever,” Maciol told CNN. “We really want peace.”
After October 7, it became increasingly rare for Israelis to publicly call for peace with the Palestinians.
A Peace Index survey released by Tel Aviv University in March found that only 20% of Israeli Jews said they believed in the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, but 92% said they believed continued conflict would harm their country. A total of 47% supported establishing Israeli civilian settlements in the Gaza Strip after the end of the war, and 71% supported Israel providing incentives that would lead to Palestinians voluntarily leaving the Strip.
Nevertheless, according to multiple opinion polls, a majority of Israelis believe it is time to end the conflict in Gaza. A September poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that two years after the Hamas attack, 66% of Israelis say it is time to end the war in the devastated enclave.
Israel’s shrinking peace movement is seen by many Israelis as aspiring to an unattainable fantasy, and some of its supporters say it faces ridicule.
Chahal says that when she says she’s a peace advocate, people ask her, “Don’t you want to be safe?”
Avshalom Zohar Sal, 28, who moved to Nir Oz with his girlfriend in August after witnessing the events of October 7, had a similar experience.
Saru says that after two years of violence, most of Israeli society is having a hard time imagining peace.
“I think it’s hard to see a different reality after October 7,” he said.
Israel’s current government is the most far-right in the country’s history. Extremists such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich not only oppose peace with Gaza, but also call for the expulsion of the enclave’s residents. Both seek to resettle Jews in their territories.
But even as new residents repopulate the kibbutzim, some of those who lived through the horrors of October 7 are not ready to return.
Yaron Maor, 41, was living in Kibbutz Nir Oz when it was attacked in 2023. He lived there with his wife and four children, the youngest of whom was 7 years old.
Maor said he and his family were hiding in a safe room when they heard the sounds of militants searching people inside the house.
“It was… 7:50 a.m. and we realized there was no one to help us, no military,” Maor told CNN. “I had a very clear feeling, or understanding, that I was going to die.”
Maor and his family were soon rescued and moved to Eilat in southern Israel, along with many other surviving kibbutz residents. However, to this day he refuses to return home.
“You have to understand the situation we are in. We are exhausted. We fought on all fronts to survive. My wife’s father was kidnapped… We are trying to deal with the trauma of ourselves and our children,” he told CNN.
Nir Oz was one of the kibbutzim hardest hit on October 7th. A total of 93 homes were destroyed, with only six surviving, said Neri Shotan, CEO of the Kibbutz Movement Recovery Fund. Of the 420 residents, 47 were killed and 76 were kidnapped.
“We saw bodies. There were a lot of bodies,” Maor told CNN.
Even among those returning to the Gaza border, fear of new attacks persists.
In March, Michal Rahab was one of the first to return to his home in Kibbutz Nirim, just four miles east of the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. At first she told herself that she would never return to the place where everything happened, but later changed her mind.
Now she feels strongly about returning home and says no one can kick her out.
“They, and Hamas, live on a myth and belief that the place I live in belongs to them and I have no right to exist,” she said. “If they attack us, there will be a price to pay.”
There is now a ceasefire, but Rahab says the silence it has brought is worrying.
“The explosion means I am protected, because I know that the (Israel Defense Forces) IDF is active and doing what is necessary to keep us safe,” she told CNN. “Now that there’s a ceasefire and everything is quiet, we don’t know what the other side is doing.”
Shahar believes that there should be no place in Israel where its citizens would be afraid to live.
She said peace with the Palestinians is the only way residents can truly feel safe. “We want to make the city a comfortable place to live.”
