‘There’s Nowhere to Run’

SDEROT – The loudspeaker crackles to life and an ominous computer-generated voice pipes up: “Shahar adom. Shahar adom (red dawn).” You now have 20 seconds or less to find shelter, if possible, and pray.

Then you hear a whistling rocket that culminates in a crash. If it hasn’t landed near you, you wonder where it has: in an empty field or on the house of someone you know?

This has been the terrorized state of existence for residents of Sderot, a town of 24,000 about 1 kilometer (.6 mile) away from the Gaza Strip. Sderot has been the target of most of the crude homemade Palestinian rockets, Kassams, for more than five years now. The rocket attacks swell and subside in intervals, but since Israel pulled out of Gaza a year ago, they have escalated. 

“There’s nowhere to run,” resident Yaffa Rassad said.

Residents say the attacks occur almost every day, at any hour, and often several times a day. There is no pattern, only the traumatizing chance that anything can happen at any time. 

“At first the warning system gave you 20 seconds, but now many times the rockets have fallen before I’m even looking for where to go hide,” said municipality worker Dvora Elbaz. “I think of this every moment. I drive home and I think, ‘God, where is it going to be next?’ I sit in my house on the sofa with my arms crossed, ready. I sleep in a training suit because at any moment it could happen. Every night is like this.”

Under this sort of threat, many residents are experiencing emotional and psychological problems and have sought professional help to deal with the trauma.

At least 13 people have been killed in these attacks. This year, property has been damaged and people have been treated for shock, but no one has been killed. But many fear it is only a matter of time before the rockets become more accurate. One has reached as far as the center of Ashkelon, a port city seven miles (12 kilometers) north of Gaza. 

Ironically, residents describe Sderot as safe enough to leave your doors unlocked. Most residents have families and jobs in the city and cannot imagine living in anywhere else in Israel. Sderot is a middle class city built in the southern Negev desert. There is a large population of immigrants from the Caucasus and former Soviet Union. 

The army says that since Kassam attacks began in 2002, some 1,200 rockets have been fired at Israel. Lately, most have landed in or near Sderot and residents had accused the government and army of doing too little to stop it. A protest tent was set up outside City Hall, manned 24 hours a day by residents who demanded action to stop the rain of rockets. 

“We are putting pressure on the government by being here,” said Arye Cohen. “I believe that in the end the government will wake up.”

Several protests have been staged at the Sderot home of Defense Minister Amir Peretz. Residents feel abandoned by the politician whom they used to consider one of their own.

The government finally did act against the Kassams in conjunction with its military offensive into southern Gaza to try to recover kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. The army has pounded launching pads in northern Gaza, but rockets continue to fall on Sderot and nearby towns.

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Arye Cohen, 48

A Kassam fell 2 meters from my brother’s house. His car was damaged, his house was damaged. He was treated for heart issues.

Almost every neighborhood of Sderot has been affected. People have also gone crazy. The injured are taken to the hospital, get treated, then they pay their own bill. That’s it.

I have five kids. It’s impossible to raise kids normally here. My son is 10—he doesn’t know any other way. This is the New Orleans of Israel.

Sveta Tritanko, 13 

Everyday you wake up wondering if Kassams will fall. It’s very hard to live here. Our parents are scared to let us go out. Sometimes we don’t even go to school. We are tense all the time. The government needs to help us. We don’t want to evacuate the city.

We thought we could live with them [the Palestinians], make peace with them, but they obviously don’t want to. We gave them Gush Katif [the Gaza settlements], now they want more. We don’t want a life like this, we want a normal life. They are people who love to kill. 

We pray more, we ask that the Kassams stop.

Dvora Elbaz, Sderot municipality worker

Everyone wants help we cannot give. We put a smile on our faces at work, but on the inside, we feel so bad.

Now, who is thinking of work? Who is looking for money? We just want quiet. I know a lot of people who are living with pills because there is not other way. In another 10 years, the kids from here will be showing emotional and mental issues.

Every time a rocket falls and no one dies, we thank God.

Shlomi Montoriano, 37

I have two daughters, four and eight years old. At 9 p.m. I woke them up to get to the security room. Then we had to do that again at 11:30 p.m. Our life is not normal and we don’t act normal. It’s surreal.

I’m left-wing, but they [the Palestinians] are influencing me little by little against them. They don’t think of my side. I’d give them a state, but they are not going in that direction. We haven’t been hurt yet, but they want that to happen. They don’t want us here, they don’t want us in Netanya, they don’t want us in Jerusalem, they don’t want us in Tel Aviv.

This is not a suicide bomber that picks his target. Kassams fall where they may. We have to find a solution. They’re right and I’m right. I’m ready to give them a state, but they aren’t ready to let me have mine.

One night I told my daughters to not go to school the next day. That day, a Kassam fell at their school. We call these miracles.

Yaffa Rassad

I’m not leaving. I’ve lived here 50 years. I grew up here, married here, raised my kids and grandchildren. I buried my parents here.

You’re sitting there and you hear the alert, and you have no idea where it’s going to fall.

I pray all the time that God will do something. We have a lot of miracles here because no one has been killed. That’s what we say anyway.

Not everyone in Sderot has a bomb shelter in their apartment. There’s nowhere to run.