REPORT FROM SDEROT

Just two hours before arriving in Sderot with a small solidarity mission from Jerusalem, several rockets were launched at the southern Israeli town activating the “Red Dawn” early warning system. It announces the words “red dawn’ over loud speakers alerting residents to take cover.

Currently “Red Dawn” is being updated and is expected to provide a more accurate warning for residents to head for a secure room or shelter. It is also being renamed “Color Red,” since children named ‘Dawn’ have been traumatized by hearing their name every time there is an attack.

“The Palestinians are trying and they are almost succeeding in making Sderot a ghost town because it happens to be scary here,” Sderot resident Rabbi Dov Fendel said. “We don’t have figures but there is a lot of panic and fear and if they could leave they would but they don’t know where to go since there is a war in the north.”

The residents of Sderot have been bombarded with Kassam rockets long before last summer’s disengagement plan.
Back then launch sites were generally deeper inside Gaza and the Gush Katif communities acted as a buffer zone protecting the Gaza perimeter towns.

Now that Gush Katif no longer exists, the Palestinians have moved closer to the Gaza/Israel border focusing their attacks on places like Sderot believing if they apply enough pressure Israel will leave just like it left the Gush and northern Samaria. However, Fendel was optimistic and explained how parts of the community are growing and even though Sderot is mainly secular, his seminary is planning to expand across a large area of town.

“As the Palestinians shell, we build,” he said adding that everything is being privately funded.

Standing on top of a building near the eastern side of Sderot, Rabbi Fendel explained that Kassams, which weigh 8 kilos, have killed but more than anything, cause damage and inflict fear in the hearts of people.
“Its as if you walk into a house with a gun and you shoot and you miss and say, ‘no big deal,” he said adding that it happened two hours before our conversation when one fell next to a house just missing its owner.

“All I have to do is move over two meters and the person is dead,” said the rabbi, referring to the launchers.
In some cases, people have been killed but even though a fatality has not happened for a year and a half in Sderot, people know if the rockets attacks continue it will happen again.

Sderot was established in1954 by a group of Persian and Moroccan Jews who were brought over by boat and dropped off in the area with no strategic considerations in mind even though they were about 3 kilometers from the Gaza border.
Rabbi Fendel described how when the immigrants came off the boat authorities put them on trucks and when the trucks ran out of gas they founded the town. Eventually in 1990 a large Russian immigration raised the population closer to the present total of 25,000.

PRIOR to the 1967 Six Day War residents say ties between the Jews of the area and the Arabs of Gaza were difficult but after the war, relations improved dramatically.
It was only after the first intifada began in 1987 that they began to sour but were still strong. However, when the Olso process started and Israel gave weapons to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat thinking he wanted peace, all signs of cooperation ended. Now, Fendel says, the situation has gone from bad to worse.

“Its clear that the Palestinian’s motivation has multiplied since the disengagement as it gave them a whole new spirit. If they can get rid of Neve Dikalim anything is possible,” he said referring to one of the Gush Katif towns. His wife, Mechi Frieverwitzer-Fendel agrees but thinks Sderot fairs better politically than the communities that were inside Gaza.

“When rockets fell on a Gaza community the people in Israel said, ‘serves them right for being there’ but when a kassam falls here I think we have a little bit of sympathy from the public,” she said.

Part of that sympathy has been due to the success of the 24 hour protest tent in the town’s center, which is used to raise awareness. Following Israel’s incursion into Gaza on 25 June 2006 after the Hamas attack that caused the killing of two IDF soldiers and the abduction of a third, the IDF responded with artillery fire on open areas across the border and limited air strikes targeting terrorist cells. Residents of Sderot were furious that the government didn’t allow the IDF to use greater capability in dealing with the Palestinians and that many of the attacks came from the evacuated communities in Gaza.

Now that Israel has returned to Gaza to uproot the terror infrastructure there, the people of Sderot have renewed hope a cessation of attacks may come sooner than later. Until then, life goes on and the community tries to function normally, though children are told to play near closed areas so they can take immediate cover if there is an attack.

Teenagers feel the pressure too as Ohr, a 16 year old waitress at a local diner described.
She said she lives with the fear of rocket attacks everyday and remembers when a year and a half ago, her neighbor and friend Elle Abukasis was killed as she tried to save her younger siblings after a Kassam hit their home.

“I was home, there was a boom so big and scary. She was hit in her house,” Ohr said. Standing behind the bar, she added that others her age want peace but before there can be peace Israel needs to destroy the groups that are out to destroy the Jewish State.

While daily Kassam attacks on Sderot and nearby communities have dropped slightly in recent days, they are falling in greater numbers and when they do they cause damage, injury, and fear.
In the past two weeks more than 40 hit Sderot, surrounding towns, and open areas in the western Negev desert. Several people were wounded and treated for shock.