From The Guardian – read the full article online
Volunteers of different ethnicities are working to help victims of the violence and tidy up bomb shelters
“…since the new wave of violence engulfing the region began on 7 October – when Hamas burst through the Gaza security fence and rampaged through dozens of Israeli communities, killing 1,400, leading Israel to declare a war on the strip that has killed 2,200 – some have found hope in the ability of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel to band together. Thousands of volunteers of different ethnicities are working to help victims of the violence and clean up neglected bomb shelters, amid many other efforts at calming the heightened tensions around the country. […]
The Negev’s Bedouin tribes were some of the first to organise volunteer teams, made up of 600 people, to search for missing Israelis. “We saw that there was enormous chaos and realised we must do something,” Sleman Shlebe, from the village of Bir Hadaj, told Haaretz.
“We heard about people missing from both the Arab and Jewish communities, and knew that thanks to our exceptional familiarity with the south we could help … We divided ourselves up in the cars so that there would be people responsible for different things: gathering information, rescuing and administering first aid.”