Defiant shop owner continues to open for business despite Gaza terror

04 November 2023 , 21:15

956     0

Mark Izaeve is still open (Image: Humphrey Nemar)

Inside it looks for all the world like the Kabin corner shop from 'Coronation Street'.

Outside, you can hear the missiles whistling overhead and bombs landing on Gaza. Defiant Mark Izaev, 46, has kept the doors of his tiny store open even though most of his customers have fled. Hamas militants took the lives of 45 locals, including 15 pensioners whose minibus broke down nearby on an outing to the Dead Sea. They were killed as they waited for a tyre to be changed. Mark gives away his bread and milk to the few who remain; he is surviving on the sale of tobacco to soldiers heading for the frontline, but his stocks are low.

People search through buildings that were destroyed during Israeli air raids in the southern Gaza Strip (Getty Images)

He told how the area has lived with the threat of missiles for almost a quarter of a century. He said: "They started off with the Qassam rockets, but they were not that big, not that powerful. We have been suffering for more than 23 years with missiles coming down. They were like pipes flying through the air at first. Now they are more sophisticated, more heavy duty."

He is proud of his store, called Sason Corner Shop after the original owner Sason Sahra. "We give away the milk and bread for free, to the local people left," the dad-of-two explained, who has two sons serving in Israel's armuy. "The police, the medical people come in and we sell cigarettes to the Israeli soldiers. But we are running low." A soldier en route to the frontline pops in to buy cigarettes; he is given a soft drink for free as Mark chats with him about the war. Another local pops in for bread, milk and sweets. Mark makes coffees too, his counter surrounded by confectionery familiar to shopkeepers in the UK - Bounty bars, Twix, M&Ms and Nutella biscuits.

But the nearby streets of Sderot are littered with wrecked cars; the local police station was razed to the ground after the gunfight between Hamas fighters and the Israeli Defence Forces. Around the corner, we watched missiles landing on the Gaza strip, around a mile from the now deserted houses of Sderot, evacuated after the Hamas attack of Oct 7 triggered the bloody conflict.

Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade

Jeremy Armstrong