Three years ago this month, Israel uprooted 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, ostensibly to “ease friction” with the Palestinians. But Israelis in Sderot and other communities surrounding Gaza have gotten anything but the promised peace and quiet.
Since the “disengagement” in August 2005, more than 5,000 rockets and mortars have been fired at Israel from Gaza. In the first six months of this year, 1,075 rockets and 1,204 mortars were fired across the border, exceeding the total in any full year previously.
Businesses have suffered heavy economic losses and 50 percent of the region’s residents have been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
This reporter travelled to the border region to find some of the stories you don’t hear every day in the news.
The Conundrum of Humanitarian Aid
A few months ago, Oleg Lipson, 37, and Lev Cherniak, 53, were working at the Nahal Oz terminal, which supplies Gaza with most of its fuel, when four Palestinian gunmen stormed across the border fence and opened fire, killing them both.
It was a win-win situation for Hamas. Not only did they kill two Jews, but they also managed to stifle the flow of fuel to Gaza, forcing the terminal to close for days. This created a contrived fuel crisis in Gaza, which brought international sympathy to the Palestinians and international condemnation on Israel.
The terminal is operated by an Israeli fuel company. Trucks arrive on the Israeli side and unload their cargo into an underground pipeline that transfers the fuel into Palestinian territory.
In this vicious cycle, Israel walks a tightrope between humanitarian concern for the Palestinians and the safety of its own citizens.
Colonel Nir Press, who heads the Erez Crossing Coordination Office, outlined the irrational routine of his work. As his office endures frequent rocket and mortar fire, he and his soldiers arrange for humanitarian aid trucks to enter Gaza and review requests by Palestinians to travel to schools and hospitals in Israel and abroad.
“In the last few months they attacked the crossing every week,” he said. “Unfortunately Hamas does not care for the civilian population of Gaza; they are targeting the crossing because they want suffering on the Gaza side.”
Whenever there is an attack, the crossings must close in order to regroup. Press said an average of 75 trucks a day cross into Gaza, but “on an attack day, it’s half that.”
Post Traumatic Stress
While most rockets do not hit Israeli homes, the trauma of each launch is finding its way into the lives of many Israelis in the Gaza border region.
“Fifty percent of the people are suffering from trauma, usually called post traumatic, but it’s not ‘post’ yet,” said Chen Abrahams, a social worker. “It has been like this for eight years.”
Abrahams lives at Kibbutz Kfar Aza where a neighbor was killed earlier this year in plain sight of many residents. As a social worker in Sderot, Abrahams sees many cases of trauma to varying degrees, but says that every child has its own manifestation of anxiety.
And she is not immune either: Her 8-year-old son sleeps in bed with Abrahams and her husband and has been doing so for months now. “You can imagine what that does to the relationship between me and my husband,” she said.
Parents also grapple with issues like whether to let their children play outside, or sometimes, even whether to go to school. Schools have begun to make a game out of running to the shelter since sirens go off frequently.
The Red Alert system gives a 15-second warning to residents when a rocket has been launched. But that doesn’t help everyone.
“Deaf people don’t hear the alert,” noted Chezy Deutsch, director of international relations for the army’s Home Front Command.
Deutsch and his team go door to door mapping out residents with specific needs. They distribute beepers to the deaf and advise caretakers on how to move the elderly and immobile in case of an emergency.
Productivity Suffers
Many businesses in southern Israel are losing productivity not just to property damage, but more to the constant rocket alerts that send workers scurrying for cover.
“There is an alarm five to 10 times a day,” said Ronnie Levine, vice president of marketing for Erez Industries, a textile and plastic manufacturer at Kibbutz Erez near the Gaza border. “The workers leave the machine, run outside for shelter and when they come back, either the machine is not working” or they spend time trying to find out if their family members are okay.
“Eighty-five percent of their mind is not on the machine,” Levine estimated, accounting for a 30 percent loss in business over three years.
Prior to the Gaza evacuation, Erez employed Palestinian workers and still pays the salaries of two who worked there 20 years.
At Nirlat paint factory, employees can see right across the barren field to Gaza. “They are constantly observing us,” said manager Yehuda Kaplan. Nirlat has absorbed a couple of direct hits from rockets and mortars. After each, workers have taken one to two days off before they dared return.
Further north, 10 percent of the land at Kibbutz Nahal Oz can no longer be cultivated because it is in sniper range. “Our main problem right now is to convince workers to go out in the fields,” said agricultural manager Yankela Cohen.
Cohen, 73, is no stranger to these hazards. In the 1950s the kibbutz was founded as a joint military-agricultural venture and the workers dodged Egyptian fire. Now the kibbutz is prohibited from using a plane to spray pesticide within 1.5 miles (2.5 km.) of the Gaza border, for fear that it could be shot down, and pests are feasting on their crops.
“There are direct and indirect losses,” Cohen said. “There is no way to continue like this. We are going to lose the whole Negev. We are losing the future.”
Believers Find Peace in Their Hearts
“Fifteen seconds before you called there was a siren,” Dina Gelfand told Israel Today one evening during the “cease-fire” between Israel and Gaza. “A rocket just landed in an open field.”
Gelfand is the pastor of a small Messianic congregation in the rocket-battered city where 15 to 20 believers meet four times a week in an apartment. Sirens have interrupted their meetings many times, so they pray for God’s protection and frequently quote Psalm 91. They live amidst the terror along with the rest of the community.
“We have peace in our hearts,” Gelfand said. “For people who don’t believe in Yeshua [Jesus], the situation here is too hard to deal with.”
Ironically, one of the congregation’s main prayers is for the Palestinians of Gaza.
“There will be no peace here if there is no peace in Gaza,” Gelfand said. “They are also suffering, and suffering from worse things than we are.”
The congregation’s apartment suffered a direct hit by a rocket while a woman was inside. But miraculously the woman was completely unscathed and the rocket hit the cement shelter of the apartment, leaving it intact.
Just like the rest of Sderot and southern Israeli residents, Gelfand quickly educated herself in this situation: She knows where to run for safety, not stand near a window, preferably not to live on the top floor of an apartment building.
But Gelfand has no plans to leave Sderot. “This is my place. I know this is from God,” she said. “I love Sderot, 100 percent. I feel I’m home.”
Gelfand said the congregation helps the community where it can practically and by praying with families. Most of all, they are an example of peace in the storm.
“They think we’re crazy, they think that fear is logical and that you need to be afraid and that you need to be stressed,” Gelfand said. “But I know that God watches over me. God is alive, God is almighty. If we believe in this, there is peace and faith.”
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