To the right, heavy traffic on the road to Tel Aviv; To the left, verdant orchards. It's 28°C on this Wednesday, October 25, eight degrees warmer on average than in previous years at the same time. The clementines and avocados are ripe, the pomegranate trees laden with large fruit. "In a month's time, it'll be grapefruit and lychee season," observed Oded Polishuk, a shy, smiling, red-haired fellow in his thirties who is preparing to take over the farm founded by his father and who, perched on his tractor, brought truckloads of fruit into a storage area cooled by fans.

For years, the Polishuk family have employed five Thai workers and two Palestinians from Gaza to pick the grapes, lodging them on-site in the wooden houses that give this farm in Kfar Bilu, a little over 30 kilometers from Tel-Aviv, a touch of American suburbia. But nothing resembles "before" anymore. Since the October 7 terrorist attacks, the Thais have left. On Tuesday, they lined up in a long queue in the lobby of Tel Aviv's Intercontinental Hotel, waiting for the Thai embassy to organize their repatriation. "3500 of the 8000 workers who came to Israel have already flown back to Bangkok," confirmed one of the Thai diplomats at the time. And the flow has not stopped.

The two Palestinian workers won't be coming back either. "The police arrested them," said Polishuk, who believes that they were taken to Ramallah, the capital of the West Bank administered by the Palestinian Authority, where there are already many refugees. Since the threat of war, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza with work permits have been banned from staying in Israel – for fear of attacks, supposedly. Moreover, the Polishuks no longer want them. "How can we still trust them after what happened?" said Oded's brother Gal, an engineer who has just joined the army.

"To avoid arguing too much"

In front of the large crates of fruit, three people were hard at work. Over the past 10 days or so, volunteers have been arriving at restaurants, hospitals, and farms to replace mobilized soldiers and workers, who are now lacking. Shiraz Salomon and Morian Menuhin are among these volunteers. "In normal life," as Shiraz put it, these two fifty-somethings, friends for over 20 years, are both partners in a Tel Aviv architectural firm. Until recently, they renovated houses and beautiful brick-and-wood lofts, which Shiraz displayed on her cell phone, in Jaffa, an old city that is now part of Tel Aviv, where both Israeli Jews and Arabs live. "Victim of love," read her T-shirt, as she sorted through large red pomegranates. She's a left-winger, charming, generous, very "bourgeois bohemian." He's a kind of giant, good-natured and reassuring.

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