Living Under Siege

There is no normalcy. Unless a twisted normalcy can be taken to be the situation that Sderot residents live in, knowing how long they have - mere seconds - to get to the nearest bomb shelter at the dreaded sound of the sirens blasting out their warning that there are incoming bombs. Kassam rockets they're usually called. And that can describe a sophisticated rocket expressing new technology brought to Gaza through the kindly auspices of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or home-made pipe bombs using fertilizer as explosive material.

Usually, the press in the West casually dismiss the lobbing of those Kassams over the border from Gaza into Israel and toward Sderot, as 'harmless' diversions. Not powerful enough to result in any kind of significant damage, let alone loss of life or human injuries. They do not, in London and in New York, live with the daily anticipation that they will suddenly have to drop everything and make a mad dash with children in tow to the closest shelter, and cower there until danger has passed.

Hoping, the while, that the rockets haven't hit anything significant. Like a school, or a factory, a farm or a public building. Sometimes they do. Mostly they don't. Their aim is not significant as far as anything approximating accuracy. When something or someone does get hit it's an anomaly, not a frequent occurrence. What does occur with frequency, however is the alarm, the rush to shelter, the trauma. And this impacts on peoples' lives in a manner indescribable to those who have never experienced it.

Children are constantly in a state of trauma, fear brought on by the reality that they must be aware at all times that there will be a need to shelter themselves from the potential harm of a weapon that someone who hates them and detests their presence in the only place they have ever known, is attempting to kill them and their parents. It is a message of deadly vitriol, one that seeps deep in a child's consciousness, darkly troubling and fear-inducing. It is not a normal way for any child to live.
If children are fearful and troubled, so are their parents concerned for the welfare of their children, as well as themselves.

Attacks have been ongoing for thirteen years with over fifteen thousand rockets fired from Gaza at Israel. These attacks increased measurably when Israel took the unilateral step of removing its entire presence from the Gaza Strip, leaving the Gazan Palestinians to administer it for themselves, which resulted in criminal chaos and a final take-over by Hamas whose charter expressly sets out the terms of its existence with Israel; none; it is entirely committed to extinguishing the Jewish presence from all of "Palestine", restoring the land to Muslim rule.

At the Sderot police station there is a collection of rockets. They have all, whether sophisticated technically, or home-made devices, been painted to distinguish from whom each spiralling gift came from. Plain red courtesy of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Yellow and red the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades. Black, al-Qaeda. No word on the colour of those coming as gifts from Hamas, although they're likely green in colour. Israel's friends and supporters advise them to be cool, not to overreact, that everything must be proportional.

They can do that. They have no idea, and actually don't wish to experience the idea. But advice is cheap, and it is freely given. None of them have had to learn to live with constant violent attacks. When the IDF entered Gaza last November they exited when they were satisfied that the Hamas arsenal of long-range rockets, the Iranian-designed-and-produced Fajr-5s and M75s had either been destroyed or had been used by Hamas in its record-breaking assaults, hitting as far as Tel Aviv, and where the Iron Dome system proved its value.

The Egypt-arranged ceasefire has been effect since then. And Israel has been busy halting shipments of new munitions to Gaza ever since. Despite which, some do manage to get through; those ubiquitous tunnels aid immeasurably. Over a dozen people in Israel have been killed, over 1,500 seriously wounded, and everyone suffers from post-traumatic syndrome from ongoing stress. Some of those weapons that are lobbed into Sderot are made of pipes Israel has given to Gaza for sewer construction. And fertilizer meant for agricultural crops.

And there is irony here; complaints of embargo shortages, support by Western sympathizers at the plight of the Palestinians to break the embargo. The continual bombardments are considered less than effective provocation of a people frustrated beyond measure by the limits imposed upon their ability to express their radical displeasure with the existence of an alien element on their soil, dispossessing them of what should be rightfully theirs. It is a message absorbed and dear to the hearts of the liberal-left who demonize Israel and admire Hamas.

Another of life's splendid little ironies: An immigrant from Argentina, living now in Sderot, described his experience in Buenos Aires: "I survived a terrorist bombing in Buenos Aires", he said, speaking of the 1994 Hezbollah car-bomb attack on a Jewish community centre that succeeded in injuring hundreds and killing 85 people. And now he is experiencing the bombs that go off in Sderot. "There is nowhere in the world that is safe nowadays. I am staying here", he declared decisively.

He won't have long to wait for the next accelerated bombardment. Since the ceasefire brokered by Egypt in November there have been sporadic Kassam incidents. Hamas and its fellow terrorists are biding their time, rebuilding their munitions reserves. It is traditional Arab hudna time. When they feel they have been well re-stocked and confident that they have sufficient armaments to begin another round, they will use them again.