Sderot; An Israeli Ghost town

A few kilometers from the Gaza Border, Sderot, small Israeli town in the Western Negev shutters every time it hears a whistle. Wherever it be an old man pushing a cart of oranges, the strong dry winds of the desert, a child humming along to his walkman. For eight years now the Israeli city has born through daily attacks emanating from the Gaza Strip. Behind the police station rusty rockets are piled one on top of each other, rust sticks them together. The heads are bent on all sides, which gives them the appearance of large metal flower, overflowing with metallic trash. Blue and Green for Hamas, Yellow for the Fattah al-Aqsa brigades, and Red and Green for the Islamic Jihad party. Some of them are nearly 10 meters long, others the size of a wine bottle. They fall in playgrounds, street corners, bathtubs, backyards, classrooms, bus stops…

            A recently build playground in the center of Sderot, arbors two very large cement snakes, one is painted yellow with orange spots, the other pink with red spots. Inside each one, about a meter from the entrance, a thick red line. A sign at the entrance says “you are protected only once you have passed the red line.” The city of Sderot is one of the most forlorn and depressing cities in Israel. The main street has no shops, only a couple shwarma and falafel fast-foods. A few women sit in the yellow bus shelter huddling behind the red line. No dogs or cats, nobody strolls the streets of Sderot; every passerby seems in a hurry to regain the haven of his or her home. As we ride through the city, 40 or some Pro-Palestinian activists, the guide points out the rounded shelter over the schools, the new rocket-proof bright red cinema, the house recently destroyed by a rocket that Obama visited during his campaign…

            We drive to a viewpoint over Gaza. About 4 kilometers away one can see the outline of tall dirty-white apartment buildings, a sharp contrast to the deep blue Mediterranean directly behind. Even from this distance Gaza looks like a third-world country where slums and tall building merge in a very small space. The inhabitants of Sderot tell us of the days, before the construction of the wall, when they would go to the Gaza beached and markets, when they would have friends on each side of the wall.

            My friend, Nadav Drori, was in Gaza during the disengagement. He was helping Israeli settler families to pack their belongings, and load them into their cars. A little girl, of about 8 years old, clutched his legs, crying “How can you do this? You are Jewish too? How can you do this to your brothers and sisters?” Nadav hitchhiked all the way back to his mother’s house in Maale-Adommim. After a week of hiding, he turned himself over to the IDF, was kicked out of his unit, and had to spend a week in jail as punishment. Since then Nadav wears an orange bracelet, symbol of his nonviolent resistance to the disengagement.