JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The Israeli beach of Jaffa is only 40 miles away from the beach in Gaza City, but they could not be more different. NPR's Frank Langfitt and Anas Baba, our Gaza reporter, teamed up to tell this tale of two beaches.
(SOUNDBITE OF OCEAN WAVES CRASHING)
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: I'm Frank Langfitt. I'm on the beach in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv. The waters are a beautiful turquoise color. There are like five, six people out on paddleboards, a guy here doing pushups. I've been talking to this guy named Uri Liel (ph). He's a data analyst. He comes to the beach as often as he can to come surfing.
URI LIEL: A lot of surfers in the water right now. I would say at least a hundred.
LANGFITT: Earlier this year, Liel was surfing further down the Israeli coast. A siren went off.
LIEL: And then you start hearing all these kind of, like, you know, war sounds, like, (imitating missiles whooshing), Iron Dome or air defense.
LANGFITT: Israel was trying to intercept incoming Iranian missiles. One got through.
LIEL: And I could see the fins. I mean, I saw it in the air, and then it fell in the water.
LANGFITT: The missile landed about 60 feet away from Liel, sending a geyser in the air three stories high.
LIEL: And I was not feeling shocked, and then I got - I started getting worried that maybe I should be shocked.
LANGFITT: The answer is, most of the time, beach life here is safe and relaxing, but with wars on several fronts, you never know.
LIEL: Since October 7, things can turn on a dime at any point.
(SOUNDBITE OF OCEAN WAVES CRASHING)
ANAS BABA, BYLINE: I'm Anas Baba on the beach in Gaza City, about 40 miles south of Frank. I'm looking out at the same Mediterranean Sea, but the water is not turquoise. It looks murky and muddy. Israeli missiles destroyed sewage treatment plants here. People come to the beach for some of the same reason they do in Jaffa. Children splash in the water. Adults play music.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMMING)
BABA: Some kids even surf, but not on fiberglass surfboards. Recently, I watched two boys ride the waves on the rusty door of a refrigerator they had scavenged from the rubble. Iman Shaheen (ph) is 24. She's an artist and comes to the beach to escape.
IMAN SHAHEEN: (Through interpreter) We view the sea as our salvation, that it will pull us out of the reality we are in. We are besieged, and all the people of Gaza say that the sea is a lifeline. So we keep staring at it as if it's a glimmer of hope, perhaps telling it, take us, come save us.
BABA: The U.S. brokered a ceasefire in Gaza a year ago, but more than 1,400 people have been killed here since. Shaheen not only survived an attack last year when an Israeli missile struck a cafe here on the beach, killing 30 people.
SHAHEEN: (Through interpreter) Even the sea, from the sheer number of bodies thrown into the water, turned the color of blood.
BABA: Most of Gaza City is now rubble, so thousands live here on the sand.
SHAHEEN: (Through interpreter) Behind me there are tents, displaced people, and in front of me, there are gunboats.
BABA: Gunboats from Israel where Frank is.
LANGFITT: I walk up the beach, and I spot this woman named Miriam Cohen (ph). Cohen comes here a couple of times a week to maintain some sense of normalcy.
MIRIAM COHEN: (Through interpreter) One of the reasons to go to war is to protect the country and all that happens within it, to ensure that its citizens can continue living their lives in peace and security.
LANGFITT: What do you think these days about Gaza?
COHEN: (Through interpreter) When I think about the beach in Gaza, which I rarely do, instead of picturing it as all blue, I imagine it red with blood.
LANGFITT: Cohen, who's 21, says she mostly thinks of Israeli blood, including the nearly 1,200 people killed when Hamas attacked three years ago. In the wars that followed, one of her cousins was killed in action. In Gaza, more than 74,000 people have been killed. Cohen recognizes that Gazans have suffered a lot.
COHEN: (Through interpreter) I think they're poor, unfortunate people. I think many of them may have found themselves in a situation they wouldn't have chosen, but there isn't much that can be done about it. No one wants to be at war or die. Do I feel sorry for them? Not so much. Not anymore.
BABA: Back here on the beach in Gaza, no one expressed sympathy for the Israelis either. Batool Al Derhalli (ph) sits on the sand as water washes over her feet. She's a year older than Cohen and works as a content creator. Batool Al Derhalli has spent her entire life under the Israeli blockade. Like almost every young person in Gaza, she has never been permitted to leave this strip of land, which is about the size of Chattanooga with 10 times the population.
BATOOL AL DERHALLI: When thinking of Tel Aviv, I think of a world, a completely different world that feels light-years away, even though it's right next to us. It's a place of normal daily routines, ironically, uninterrupted and unlimited electricity, in a place of, simply, freedom.
LANGFITT: Back here on the beach south of Tel Aviv, Liel, the surfer, says appearances can be deceptive. He says everyone in Israel has a connection to someone who's been killed.
LIEL: I think we're accumulating a lot of invisible weight. A lot of people are dealing with traumas.
LANGFITT: Do you ever feel any guilt, given the conditions of people to the south?
LIEL: Yeah. It sure does cross my mind, of course. It is guilt. It's like, I'm having fun on the beach. What are they having? It's like - it's natural to have this feeling.
LANGFITT: Liel thinks about life in Gaza often and feels some responsibility. He says he would not want to experience what people there are going through. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Jaffa.
BABA: And Anas Baba from the beach in Gaza City. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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