Artist Shosh Segal is busy preparing her art gallery for the expected rush of tourists heading to southern Israel for the annual wild flower blooming in the coming weeks. The hills are already bursting with vibrant colors of anemones and turmoses, but reality has often found a way of spoiling plans, especially since she lives just a mile from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
“A Qassam rocket fell here last week. But we are given a warning so I can cope with that. What frightens me more are the mortars. They come without any warning at all,” Segal said in her studio of paper mache art at Kibbutz Kfar Azza.
Israel has spent nearly a billion dollars beefing up security arrangements and fortifying the farms, towns and villages adjacent to the Gaza Strip. While the number of attacks has dropped from their peak in 2008, when Palestinians fired over 3,700 rockets and mortars, to 365 last year, this has been steadily increasing over the past weeks. At least 58 rockets have been fired since the beginning of 2011, according to official Israeli army statistics.
Palestinians fired a Grad rocket at Beersheba, Israel’s largest southern city, late Wednesday causing damage to houses, but no casualties. It was the first time the city was targeted since a major Israeli incursion into Gaza two years ago. A total of seven rockets were launched at Israel over night. The Israeli air force retaliated with in Gaza City and the military said it had the squad firing the rockets.
This culminated a day of exchanges of fire along the Gaza security fence. An explosive device was detonated against Israeli forces and a mortar shell fired. The army responded by firing artillery shells into the eastern Gaza Strip, wounding 11 people. Militants returned fire, wit three mortar shells landing in open fields on a kibbutz. No injuries or damage were reported.
“It’s heating up,” says Haim Yellin, a farmer from an Israeli communal village as he stands atop a flower-coated hillock overlooking the heavily patrolled border with the Gaza Strip. “There isn’t a day that passes without some attempt to infiltrate the fence or a rocket or mortar is fired.”
The head of the Eshkol regional district that incorporates some 31 communal farms and villages, Yellin foresaw a contagion effect inside the Gaza Strip that could turn against his communities.
“The developments in the Arab world, which some people see as a positive event, needs to make us understand one thing: The State of Israel needs to find ways to bring the maximum security to its residents,” he said. “No country in the world can suffer rocket and mortar fire and terrorists attempting to infiltrate and attack schools and homes along the border.”
Yellin said some 600 Palestinians staged a demonstration in the Gaza city of Rafah, but they were dispersed by Hamas security forces. Sources in Gaza said the protests so far had been minor and that people’s energies were being focused against Israel and not the Islamist Hamas rule.
Yellin added that in his district, which also borders the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, some111 Africans has sought to cross into Israel illegally since the unrest in the Arab world began last month. It was the first time they had chosen this route and not the traditional one deeper in the desert, which he said signified the growing lawlessness on the Egyptian side of the border.
After Israel launched its Cast Lead military incursion into the Gaza Strip to halt rocket and mortar fire in 2009, a semi-deterrence had been built and a degree of calm has prevailed. Israeli’s Channel 10 television broadcast footage on Wednesday of the initial deployment of the Iron Dome system designed to shoot down short-range missiles, a further step in trying to boost deterrence and protection.
According to the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, Hamas continues to strengthen its military power by smuggling in high-quality weaponry from the Sinai Peninsula through tunnels in Rafah. It calls the Sinai Gaza’s “backyard,” where the group stockpiles weapons.
At the Sha’ar Hanegev regional high school, reinforced bus stops have been in place and a third of the classrooms covered with bomb-proof roofs. Assistant Principal Tzyla Levi said sirens go off an average of twice a week, sending students to protected areas.
The school and the adjacent Sapir College have been repeatedly hit over the years and at one point enrollment dropped dramatically as people left the area. But this has turned around since 2009. Dozens of shaggy-haired students lounged around the shaded grounds during recess, a sign of the relaxed atmosphere.
“We try to strengthen the identity, the feeling of belonging, the self confidence of the children as Israelis in Israel, but the second thing we did was to make connections with the Palestinians,” Levi said.
She said a European Union-supported endeavor attempted to create a civics program that would teach the Israeli and Palestinians schools the other side’s narrative. So far, it was only being taught in Israel, she said.
Bar Goldenberg, a high school senior, said she had participated in exchange programs and had met with her Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank.
“One of our programs in our school is learning the history of our narrative and the Palestinian narrative,” she said. “We got to compare and somehow you just look at it differently. The situation you live in is far more complex then what you see. I think it opened our mind and we are much m ore mature than then are in Tel Aviv.”
In the nearby town of Sderot, which had suffered years of deadly rocket attacks as the main target of Hamas, Mayor David Buskila decried the miserable life children lead in his city, playing under fortified roof covered parks and traumatized by years of rocket and mortar attacks.
“I hope we will have more democracies in the Middle East,” he said. “I hope the people in the world will understand that the wrong side is not our side.”
“If you see a guy beating his wife even once a year you aren’t going to say “Oh, that’s okay because he used to beat her every day’,” Buskila said. “If you have one rocket you never know when it could land it means you have that threat always.”
Back on Kibbutz Kfar Azza, Shosh Segal said she would never dream of leaving, but doesn’t necessarily want to see her grown daughters return to the area.
“When they come back to visit with my grandchildren I’m scared, tense and nervous the whole time they are here and can only relax when they return home out of the threat,” said Segal.
Doron Salamon said he scratches a living with his tour company trying to coax visitors to the region. He is also in charge of security on the kibbutz, which saw one member killed by a rocket in 2008.
“Four days ago another rocket hit the kibbutz gardens. So, a few pieces of metal fall from the sky. We aren’t crying. We are at full occupancy and there isn’t a house to rent here. We are continuing to live and create. It’s our home and we aren’t going anywhere.”
Front Page Features