In the hidden parking lot behind the Ashkelon railway station, on the northern coast of the Gaza Strip, a few tired cars turned off their lights. The place was dirty, dark and almost empty. There should have been dozens of vehicles there with people on board who, whether in the West Bank settlers community or the religious Zionist movement, had asserted in the days prior – on far-right WhatsApp groups – that they intended to join an attempt to enter Gaza by force. It was an operation designed to demonstrate their desire to recolonize the enclave that has been devastated by war for over 200 days.

One of the meeting points was set here, in Ashkelon on the night of Wednesday, April 24, in this parking lot, before moving to another gathering place closer to Gaza. From there, the crowd of aspiring recolonizers hoped to advance on foot toward Gaza the following day, breaking through police roadblocks.

But there were not many people in the parking lot. Worse still, the headlights of a police vehicle swept the scene. A man in uniform got out: "But where are the others?" he asked the driver of a battered old van crammed with his wife and children. No one knew. The gentleman behind the wheel was a little afraid of the police officer's intentions, but the latter reassured him: "Don't worry, I'm with you!"

Not far away, in an unmarked car, two agents from the domestic intelligence service (Shin Bet) tried to keep a low profile, which was not easy. They scrolled through portraits of leaders of the settler movement and extremist rabbis on their phones, but there were not many people to identify. Finally, the small group set off, heading south and soon reaching the second meeting point, a small coniferous forest with picnic tables, wedged between expressways with Gaza 5 kilometers away. Explosions could be heard in the distance at regular intervals.

'My ultimate dream is to live in Gaza'

In the darkness, wood fires, tents and silhouettes emerged. There were "hill kids" (extremist settlers who live in outposts, embryonic settlements in the West Bank) floating around in their jeans and others dressed in Orthodox fashion with their tzitzit fringes hanging down to their waists and black hats. They whispered plans for the next day: "Isn't there somewhere we could go to get a better view of the explosions in Gaza?" one boy asked.

The group, meanwhile, was wavering between two possibilities: to take part in the attempt to force the passenger into Gaza the next day or to join another group that was working on its own to block humanitarian aid trucks en route to the enclave to, they said, "prevent supplies to Hamas." Most had kosher phones, with no internet and even no texting, but some had smartphones to check on the progress of projects in various WhatsApp groups.

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