‘Today is better than yesterday,” says Noam Ivri Adanani. He’s a 37-year-old who lives in Sderot with his wife. They have been in Sderot since April 2021. Like the other 30,000 residents of Sderot, they were trapped in their home, mostly in their sheltered room in their house, as missiles were fired from Gaza and terrorists penetrated the city and fought a gun battle with police.
Sderot is very close to the Gaza border and has been a target of rocket fire for two decades. Its residents are used to wars and know the drill. However, they were not prepared for the disaster of October 7. Today Noam says that as the country prepares for a possible ground invasion there is talk of residents moving away. “We are intent on staying here.”
Sderot’s residents have been steadfast in the face of rockets in the past and the city has flourished in recent years, with new homes and community centers, playgrounds, and parks. Ivri Adanani had already experienced several short conflicts in the city; the 2021 operation and the clashes in 2022 and 2023 with Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.
“On the morning of October 7 at 6:30, we were woken up by rockets being launched. It is Simhat Torah, and we have relatives from outside of Sderot staying for the holiday with us or at my mother-in-law’s place in the same building,” he recalls. He observes Shabbat so the phone was off. But they heard the sirens and booms from interceptions overhead. They opened their phone to see the huge amount of rockets being fired. “we felt in our gut this is not good,” he says.
Soon they began to see videos from Sderot that showed armed Hamas members in a pickup truck in the city. “The videos were from a main square in the city, it was clear this could not have been doctored.” Now fear set in. Hamas was using paragliders in the attack, they could land on rooftops. The family went to their safe room locked the doors and closed the shutters on the balcony. Ten people from the extended family crammed into the safe room. There were kids as well, some who were not from Sderot and had no experience with rocket fire. “There was uncertainty. We briefly went out to the balcony and heard gunfire. This was probably the battle where the terrorists took over the police station. Off-duty officers were supposedly called by their besieged compatriots to come to the station and mount a defense and had a shootout.”
Rumors and reports as rocket sirens sound
Reports circulated among family members from another part of the city of seeing gunmen and terrorists with an RPG.
There was a lack of information about what was happening. No clear instructions for a while about what to do. Eventually, the municipality informed people of the need to stay home. Rumors that terrorists might be wearing uniforms of IDF soldiers circulated, spreading fear that even those who look like security forces could be something else. They heard vehicles outside and didn’t know if they were driven by terrorists. “All this time we heard rocket alerts.” As I was speaking to Noam on the phone there were rocket sirens in Sderot and he had to go to the safe room.
“The first day was a lot of tension. I lost my appetite. We tried to do the kiddush and do the challah blessing but everyone was nervous and we didn’t leave our building or go down the stairwell.” Later in the day, they heard a lot of gunfire. “There were several reports of other terrorist squads in the city, in the afternoon, we saw one or two more white vehicles similar to the original Hamas terror squad in the morning and suspected these were additional infiltrations being reported on social media. We heard the fence was breached and totally open.”
Finally, some sense of security returned. They saw some soldiers patrolling the area. By Sunday morning a massive siege of the police station, which terrorists had attacked, had ended. “I managed to get some sleep,” he recalls. But the images of the hostages and other horrid images spreading online were haunting.
The next day, Sunday, there was no power most of the day and it didn’t come back on until after dark. “We called Israel Electric Company (IEC) several times about when it will be fixed and they kept saying a later time than initially promised. Eventually, we had to light candles and use flashlights, worried about how much battery power was left in them.” Like most Israelis, they were not prepared to be stuck at home sheltering for 72 hours.
A trip to the store, amidst uncertainty
On Monday there were new reports of terrorists being found near Gevim, not far from Sderot. “There was panic about how they got in, are there still infiltration points along the damaged fence or even attack tunnels not detected by the supposedly sophisticated anti-tunnel underground barrier built and a lot of panic in the community.” Finally, people were able to leave their homes and go to the supermarket.
Ivri Adanani went to the Rami Levy market. The place was packed with people, carts overflowing with essentials. During the trip to the market, there were rocket sirens and people had to run to the back of the store for safety. One rocket landed outside the store. “We got home and there was another power outage. But they said people could now move about and they said they would provide escorts to leave the city.”
Like many people in the south, he endured the horror of not seeing security forces for many hours as the attack unfolded, with the uncertainty and chaos that went along with the sense of not knowing what was happening. “In the longer term outlook, I think if Hamas is destroyed then people will come back,” he says. However, unless there is a feeling Hamas can never do this again, people will not feel safe and not trust stories of a “better” security fence being built. “It has to be the complete elimination of Gaza’s military-terrorist war machine, or otherwise I think some people will consider leaving Sderot for good.”