"They were abandoned' Anger at funeral for Hamas massacre victims

Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke of "a long and difficult" conflict as he announced the second stage of the war against Hamas on Saturday evening.

- Peter Beaumont, Quique Kierszenbaum 

For the mourners attending the funeral of Lili and Ram Itamari in a kibbutz close to the Gaza Strip, however, the war has already dragged painfully through for three long weeks.

Lili and Ram were residents of Kfar Aza, the scene of one of the worst massacres carried out by Hamas on 7 October. Hundreds of armed men from the militant Islamist group burst through the border fence and murdered them in their home, hours after they had a dinner party with friends to mark the festival of Simchat Torah.

Yesterday the survivors of Kfar Aza and friends, neighbours and colleagues, converged on the agricultural community in the Gaza border area to bury the couple, whose bodies were only formally identified three days ago.

As jets roared overhead and artillery rumbled in the distance, the gathered mourners were advised at the beginning of the funeral of what to do in the event of a rocket attack: lie in the sand and cover heads with hands.

The eulogies told the story of where Israel is today, three weeks after the Hamas massacre: a profoundly wounded country bracing itself for yet more loss as armour and infantry gather in the neighbouring fields before a widely expected ground invasion.

The speakers described their grief and vowed never to "forgive or forget" how families like the Itamaris had been "abandoned" by the government, which has been accused among other things of failing to come to the aid of people after the Hamas attacks and of focusing resources on the occupied West Bank in the months before. They described ordinary lives cut short and the struggle to comprehend what had happened.