Lior Levy was lucky to be alive.
A foreman in a shipping-crate factory, he had just helped a worker push a cart across the floor Thursday when a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip crashed into the roof, knocking down a massive concrete beam that collapsed onto the spot where the two had been standing.
They had pushed the cart only a few yards away.
“There was a huge explosion, we ducked and people took cover,” said Levy, 28, who commutes to work in this town near the border with the Gaza Strip. One worker was lightly wounded in the face by flying debris, and two went into shock. The rest were shaken but uninjured.
“I’ll keep coming to work, but I won’t bring my children here again,” said Levy, who visits Sderot on weekends with his family to see relatives.
The homemade rocket, one of seven that landed in areas near the Gaza border Thursday, further unsettled this jittery community of 25,000, where schools have been closed this week because of a surge of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
Attacks increased after an explosion on a Gaza beach June 9 killed eight Palestinians, including seven family members. Witnesses said the blast was caused by an Israeli shell, but Israel denied it was responsible.
Much of the renewed rocket fire at Israel was by militants from Hamas, which resumed attacks after a 16-month truce. But Hamas scaled back its attacks Tuesday after Israeli officials warned that the group’s leaders might be hit. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for Thursday’s rocket strikes.
Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, said Hamas had decided to halt its rocket attacks after Israel made threats against the group. “Clear messages were sent … and at the end there was quiet,” Gilad told Army Radio.
Ghazi Hamad, the spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government, said it was ready to broker a cease-fire by Palestinian factions if Israel halted strikes that have killed civilians and militants in recent days.
“I spoke today with the prime minister, and he explicitly said we want quiet everywhere, we are interested in a cease-fire everywhere,” Hamad, speaking Hebrew, said in interview on Israel Radio. “We want to stop all actions if the Israeli side is ready to stop its actions in Gaza and the West Bank.”
In a separate interview with the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, Hamad said: “If Israel is prepared to clearly and unequivocally declare that it is stopping all forms of aggression against the Palestinian people, we are prepared to discuss this in all seriousness with the Palestinian factions.”
Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said: “If it is quiet, we will answer that with quiet.”
But hours later there was fresh violence. An Israeli air strike killed three Islamic Jihad militants as they tried to plant explosives on the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel, the army and Palestinians said.
In the West Bank, three Palestinians tried to force two teenage girls from a Jewish settlement into a car as the girls hitchhiked on a main road, the army said. Both girls escaped, and the car was stopped at a roadblock, where soldiers found a pistol and arrested the Palestinians, an officer said.
At the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, Palestinian Information Minister Youssef Rizka arrived with $2 million in his luggage, the second straight day that a Hamas Cabinet official had tried to bring cash to the financially strapped government.
Rizka returned from a trip to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and Hamas officials said the money he brought had come from private donations and Islamic charities. He declared the money to border officials and turned over the cash to the Palestinian Finance Ministry.
On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar returned to Gaza from a visit to Muslim countries with $20 million in his luggage. The money was also transferred to the government.
Since the Hamas-led government took office in March, foreign donors have cut off aid and Israel has halted the transfer of tax and customs revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians. The donors and Israel have demanded that Hamas renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept previous agreements with the Israelis.
Hamas has refused, and although the Palestinian government says it has raised some $60 million from Iran and other Muslim nations, international and Arab banks have refused to allow the transfer of the funds, fearing U.S. sanctions under anti-terrorism laws.
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jogreenberg@tribune.com
