By the road into this border town a field was scorched, blackened by the impact of a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Farther on, neighborhoods looked mostly empty, with only an occasional pedestrian on the street. A bus pulled away with people heading out of town, the latest group to leave after a week of alarms and explosions.
Sderot, a town of 22,000 about a mile from the Gaza Strip, is again being battered by Qassam rockets, crude projectiles fired by militants from Hamas and other groups that are terrifying local residents.
On Monday a rocket crashed into a downtown area, killing a 35-year-old woman, Shirel Friedman, wounding another person and sending protesters into the streets, where they burned tires and threw stones at City Hall.
‘You forgot us’
The rocket attacks have deepened a sense of abandonment in this community of immigrants founded in the 1950s, long plagued by economic hardship and, in recent years, by recurrent rocket strikes from Gaza.
“Shame on you, state, you forgot us in the war,” read a spray-painted message on a wall.
In the past week 60 rockets have landed in Sderot, according to the police, forcing schools to close and sending residents into safe rooms and bomb shelters. Some rockets have hit homes, and one tore into an empty classroom. Aside from the woman killed and more than a dozen people injured, more than 100 residents have been treated for shock, according to local medical services.
The rocket attacks followed a deadly surge of factional fighting in the Gaza Strip between Hamas and its rival, Fatah. Hamas said it was trying to shift the focus of the battle to Israel, and as the Israelis have responded with a series of air strikes that have killed more than 30 Palestinians, several of them civilians, the infighting has died down.
About 150 rockets have been fired at southern Israel in the past week, according to the army, and the attacks have continued despite the Israeli military action, deepening frustration in Sderot and raising demands by some residents for an all-out offensive in Gaza.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert paid his second visit in a week to Sderot after the attack Monday night but said there is no quick fix for the rocket threat.
“I completely understand the anger and frustration, as well as the expectation that things will be different,” Olmert said. “There is no simple, uniform answer to the issue of Qassam firing.”
That wasn’t enough for Yaffa Malka, a 43-year-old hair stylist who has lived her whole life in Sderot and said she is struggling to make ends meet because many customers have been scared off by the rockets.
“I can’t live from minute to minute, wondering if the Qassams will keep people away or not,” Malka said. “If the country doesn’t have a solution that can give me a normal life, it should find me an alternative somewhere else where I can live in peace and make a decent living.”
Like others in town, Malka said the army should hit back harder at Gaza. “If I’m under Qassam fire and my army doesn’t erase the place from where the Qassams are being launched, that’s not enough for me,” she said. “Why should I take their civilians into consideration when they are deliberately targeting ours?”
Though many of the inaccurate Palestinian rockets land in fields and other open areas, they have killed nine Israelis since 2004 and pose an unpredictable threat that has unsettled life in border communities near the Gaza Strip.
Manufactured in Gaza metal shops and usually fired from launchers on tripods, the rockets are up to 6 feet long and have a range of 2 to 6 miles, depending on the size of their engine and warhead.
Measures ineffective
Though Israel uses sophisticated surveillance methods to spot launches, including drones and a blimp hovering over the border, it has not been able to halt the fire by small rocket squads who often evade air and artillery strikes.
Miriam Uzan, 41, who was getting her hair cut at Malka’s salon, said it was her first venture out of the house in a week. When she arrived, she asked Malka whether the incoming-rocket warning “Color Red,” which is sounded over loudspeakers, could be heard inside and whether the ceiling was concrete and could withstand a rocket impact.
“I’m afraid to move around,” Uzan said, adding that at home she and her family take shelter in an interior room when the alarm is sounded. “We wait for the boom and pray that it’s not next to us,” she said.
Uzan said that her two teenage daughters sleep at night on mattresses in their parents’ room, fearful of spending the night in a separate room. Uzan’s 13-year-old daughter, Chen, was with her mother at the salon, unwilling to stay home alone.
For many residents the stress has been too much, and thousands have left to stay with relatives or in hotels in other parts of the country. Some of the evacuations were paid for by a Russian-Israeli billionaire, Arkady Gaydamak, and other private donors, and others were organized by the Defense Ministry.
The Sderot town spokesman said about 8,000 residents had been bused out of town for a few days of respite. But an unknown number have left on their own.
Ilanit Tzadok, 31, was on a bus with her two children, ages 8 and 9, headed for a weekend stay at a hotel paid for by a group of businessmen from Tel Aviv. She said she saw a rocket explode near her house as she ran to collect her children after an alarm and has been unable to walk outside since.
Olmert last week criticized the evacuations, saying that “these are precisely the pictures Hamas has been waiting for, and I’m not prepared to grant any victory to terrorism.”
Asked about that remark, Tzadok said, “Let Olmert come live here, just for one day.”
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jogreenberg@tribune.com
