JNS/ June 26, 2025
In recognition of 20 years since the Gaza pullout, JNS is featuring a series of articles reflecting Israel’s disengagement, speaking with an array of former Gush Katif residents to find out how they perceive the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Trump plan for the Gaza Strip and the prospect of returning. This profile is the last of a five-part series marking 20 years since Israel’s pullout from Gaza in August 2005.
Many former Gush Katif residents believe that the massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis, would have never happened had they still lived in
Gaza.
Einat Bloch of Netzer Hazani believes that it would have happened—and to them. Since Oct. 7, she’s experiencing an unexpected emotion: survivor’s guilt.
“I see the expulsion as a miracle. Really. A nes galuy (‘open miracle’),” she said in a two-hour conversation in the backyard of her Netzer Hazani home. The former Gush Katif community has successfully reestablished itself in Yesodot, a moshav in central Israel.
We met after her kids’ bedtime, the only free time she has these days. Since Oct. 7, her husband, Shoham, has been on reserve duty in Gaza, often for weeks at a time.
To substantiate her unorthodox opinion, she recalled an IDF drill in Gush Katif that simulated an Oct. 7-style invasion of Gush Katif. She and her high school classmates were instructed to flee on foot to a hill about half a kilometer away and wait for helicopters to rescue them.
“Kissufim was the only crossing that we could enter and exit. One road. We had no chance to flee. No chance. If Oct. 7 had happened to us, there would have been no survivors.”
Read the rest in JNS.
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