A huge, charmless lobby, plastic plants, fake marble and 17 floors of rooms facing the salty shores of the Dead Sea: At first glance, nothing has changed at the David Dead Sea Resort in Ein Bokek, a vast hotel complex where bookings are usually in full swing in fall.

Yet behind the scenes, everything has changed since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. The establishment is still packed, but armed guards watch the entrance, the bar has closed and customers no longer laugh in the corridors. Gone are the swimsuit-clad holidaymakers. Instead, 900 residents of the Be'eri kibbutz are staying here, after being evacuated from their homes on the border with the Gaza Strip.

Whole families are now mourning their loved ones in a place usually devoted to fun and carefree living. Overnight, their village was transformed first into an apocalyptic landscape, then into a military zone. Of the community's 1,200 inhabitants, 86 were murdered, 30 taken hostage and two disappeared. About a third of the houses have been completely burnt down, and those still standing are devastated and uninhabitable. In October, funerals followed funerals. Everyone Le Monde has met is mourning the loss of a relative or friend, but also the loss of their former lives, when they weren't haunted by horrific memories.

Like them, some 220,000 Israelis had to leave their homes in the days following October 7. That includes the Israelis living near Gaza, of course, but also those in the northern towns on the border with Lebanon. Kiryat Shmona, a town of 23,000 inhabitants, has become a ghost town. It was deserted when rockets began raining down from the neighboring country. Some of the displaced have been able to find refuge with relatives or in makeshift accommodation, but around 125,000 are still living in hotels.

Traumatized, disoriented people

The result is that in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and all of Israel's tourist resorts, hotels are overflowing with traumatized, disoriented people, torn from their ordinary existence. As a result, some towns look completely different. Unlike tourists, the displaced don't leave after just a few days.

All over Israel, children need to get back into school, adults need help getting back on their feet and to file applications for lost or destroyed identity documents; the sick need to be treated. On the shores of the Red Sea in the town of Eilat, Israel has opened a branch of the Beilinson hospital in Petah Tikva (north-east of Tel Aviv) to cope with an influx of 60,000 displaced persons – more than the entire population of the famous seaside resort.

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