Life in Sderot
December 17, 2007
Imagine you've just gotten up.
The house is quiet. The kids are asleep and you're enjoying the moment before the activity of the day breaks the stillness.
You pour yourself a cup of coffee and savor the aroma.
Then, the siren wails.
"Again," you moan, and roust the kids out of bed. Your wife, still sleepy, works with you to get the whole family to the safety of the bomb shelter.
You've got 15 seconds -- give or take a second or two -- before the rocket hits.
Even before everyone gets into the bunker, you hear the blast. You lament, "Most of the time we're late getting to the shelter." But then you comfort yourself, "Then again, most of the time, it doesn't hit your home.'
But you never know.
What would you do if you lived in a town where waking up every day meant living under the threat of daily rocket attacks?
Welcome to life in Sderot, an Israeli town about two kilometers (a little over a mile) from the Gaza Strip.
Today, the Israel Project, the Government Press Office, and the Israel Police presented the facts, figures, and the state of life in southern Israel and specifically in the town of Sderot.
Michael Cardish, deputy head of the Israel Police bomb disposal unit, said from October 2000 to November 2007, his unit has recovered 2,322 rockets. They only count the rockets they recover, which doesn't include the higher number of rockets fired but not physically recovered.
Palestinian terror groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigade fire these rockets. Since the Gaza "disengagement," when Israel pulled some 8,500 Jews out of the Gaza Strip with the promise of peace, more than 3,600 rockets have been fired.
Psychologist Marc Gelkopf, Ph.D., said life in Sderot reminded him of what life was like for the British during World War II. They lived under the constant threat of V-1 and V-2 rockets. "Buzz bombs," they called them, because of the buzzing sound the rockets made.
Today, the rockets fired at Sderot have different names: "Kassams," "Kuds," and "Aksa." Cardash said they know which group fired which rocket because of the names on the rockets. Hamas fires "Kassams," Islamic Jihad fires the "Kuds," and the al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigade fires the "Aksa."
Initially, when the first Kassam was fired on October 27, 2001, the rocket's range was about 4 kilometers (2.48 miles) and it carried a warhead loaded with 2 pounds of homemade explosives.
Today, the range of the more sophisticated rockets is about 9 kilometers (5.58 miles), and they carry a payload of more than 6 pounds of TNT.
With the introduction of longer-range rockets, the coastal town of Ashkelon will soon come consistently in range. It seems only a matter of time. Then more than 100,000 Israelis will live under the shadow of Palestinian rockets.
Can you imagine 100,000 Americans living under a similar cloud?
The rockets might not match the size of the "Buzz bombs," but they are deadly and dangerous nonetheless. They've killed 13 Israelis and maimed more than 300.
Gelkopf, who works with NATAL, the Israel Center for Victims of Terror and War, presented their findings on the emotional state of the people of Sderot. Not surprisingly, more than one in four people in the town (28.4 percent) suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Gelkopf described the human side behind that number. This means people are not able to work, cannot maintain normal family relationships, have difficulty sleeping, and have problems at school, among other behavior maladies. Translated to daily life, it means stress around the dinner table, short tempers, inability to concentrate or focus, marriages under pressure, and parents out of sorts with their children. Simply put, they're immobilized by fear, anxiety, and depression. The number of people suffering "just" mental anguish rises to 44.9 percent of the population.
For Israel, the military solution is a simple, but potentially costly one: launch a major incursion to eliminate the threat of the rockets.
But the decision is not primarily military but political. U.S. President Bush is coming next month and the new negotiations begun after last month's Annapolis conference are underway. It seems unlikely that any military action will take place right now. The fear is the new Annapolis diplomatic "system" would not survive the tremor of an Israeli incursion.
Until then, the people of Sderot will wake up to their coffee...and the sirens.
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