Rocket Town

Sderot is a town on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip.

It was founded a few decades ago as a "development town": a town artificially created by the Israeli government to take population pressure off Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and the other big cities.

Of course, no high-class European immigrant or sabra (native born) would go to a sun-baked sandbox like Sderot willingly. So the government has made a policy of shunting all of Israel's second-class Jews into the development towns- Ethiopian Jews, Moroccan Jews, Russian Jews.

Sderot isn't a dirty "Arab" shantytown, which is what people from Tel Aviv would have you think of a place that's predominantly Moroccan Jewish. It's a lovely little town that looks like it's built out of Lego blocks, with short, rectanguloid buildings splashed in bright coats of color, blue lamp-posts, and not a shred of garbage on the streets.

Sderot, nowadays, is known for being the primary target of Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip, run by the Islamic militant movement Hamas.

Part of the reason behind the present fuel blockade of Gaza has been Hamas' ongoing shelling of southern towns like Sderot. Israel hopes that buy collectively punishing the Gazans for Hamas' actions, Gaza will vote them out and elect Fatah leaders instead, who recognize Israel and would be more willing to... er... "compromise".

It hasn't worked, and it continues to rain rockets down south. Last Tuesday, I had planned to visit Sderot, and woke up with the flu. I stayed home, writing emails.

That day, 18 Qassams fell on Sderot, and 40 on the south altogether. No casualties.

I went today.

* * *



If there is an incoming Qassam, a siren wails throughout the town. You then have about half a minute to take cover before the rocket lands. From beneath safe cover, you wait until from somewhere, you hear a *BOOM*.

Then you call your family one by one.

And where would you take cover? Well, every bus stop is constructed to double as a bomb shelter.


Also, large concrete bunkers- eerily painted with sunny, cheerful murals by local artists and school groups- are set up on all the major roads at 50 meter intervals. And! - they fit in perfectly with Sderot's "Lego" theme. But no amount of artwork could disguise their purpose. This little toy town's at war.






This is the local elementary school. It has a huge, arcing bomb shield built over it. It's an utter necessity; half the town's youngsters are in there on any given day. Of course, Gaza's schools have no funds to build any sort of similar protection... but then... Israel's armed forces don't intentionally target civilians. Oh, wait- that's right. They just starve them with embargoes and blockades.


* * *

There's a rocket gallery at the local cop station.


Hundreds of makeshift, homemade Qassams, in various degrees of wreckage, displayed on racks. Big ones, small ones, long ones, thin ones. Some were rusting from years in the past; others fell as recently as two days ago.

Qassams are crude but effective, and easy to manufacture. The warheads consist of a detonator in the nose of the missile that's designed to trigger upon impact with the ground. Behind the nose is about 1 to 5 kg of gunpowder, packed with metal shrapnel. Behind this is a mixture of gunpowder and propellant that can shoot the rocket anywhere from 4 to 12 km.

Most Qassams tend to land way off course, in fields or open ground. But enough meet their mark, and Hamas gets better with practice- at calculating range, at targeting, and at production.

This one landed on Jan 21, 2008. That's three days ago.


This donkeycock landed in December last year.



When I was in Lebanon, walking the remains of a town indiscriminately bombed flat by Israel, with cluster bomb pockmarks in the roads and jagged holes in the buildings, I told myself that I'd try to see the conflict from Israeli eyes.

Here's what I've learned. They're all killing each other for the same reasons- for a Home of their own- but difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, and Israel, is that Israel has an air force.

And that difference makes all the difference. To compare the damage done to Sderot to the damage done to Gaza or southern Lebanon is to compare the Israeli Occupation to the Holocaust.

Well, yeah. Might makes right. To demand that Israel not use its full resources to "protect" its own citizens is unrealistic. Even though these resources vastly outweigh those of their enemies. Especially if these resources vastly outweigh those of their enemies.

But when I compare Maroun Al-Ras in Lebanon to Sderot... It's still hard for me to think of the Israelis as victims. It disgusts me to admit that. I just today read a story about a young Sderot girl who- a couple of years ago- flung herself on her little brother to protect him when the "Incoming!" siren howled and neither could see any cover. Her brother survived, but she died.

It's a vain hope that Israel will use its military might not simply in tit-for-tat retaliatory strikes, but as a considerable bargaining chip in an as-yet nonexistent process to remove the root causes of terrorism... a fair shake for the Shi'ites in Lebanon, and for the Palestinians in the Holy Land.

But the politics are too complicated, and hatreds too deep, for that to ever happen.