SDEROT, Israel — In the past three years, Palestinians living in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip have launched more than 6,000 rockets at southern Israel, timing the majority of their attacks to cause the most possible damage. Prior to Israel’s latest offensive, most of the rockets fell between 7:30 and 8:10 in the morning, when children walk to school.
Since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, an average of 20 rockets have fallen each day.
Sderot and Nitzan: Israeli Towns Where Rocket Strikes are a Part of Life
SDEROT, Israel — In the past three years, Palestinians living in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip have launched more than 6,000 rockets at southern Israel, timing the majority of their attacks to cause the most possible damage. Prior to Israel’s latest offensive, most of the rockets fell between 7:30 and 8:10 in the morning, when children walk to school.
Since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, an average of 20 rockets have fallen each day.
Mechi, a woman who has lived in the border town of Sderot for the past 15 years, knows the reality all too well.
Most of Mechi’s seven children were born in Sderot, which sits just few kilometers from Gaza and up until last week, had borne the brunt of the rocket fire. Her older children, now teenagers, are currently away at boarding schools, but the younger ones – all of 12, six and one – live under the constant threat of attack.
But speaking by phone from her office in Nes Tziona – she commutes daily from Sderot, taking a longer route to avoid the ever-expanding range of Hamas’ rockets as she drives northwest to work – Mechi sounded calm, even relieved, when asked about the current situation. More than three years had passed since the Israeli government uprooted its citizens from their homes in Gaza, and still, Sderot was a constant target.
“If you had looked at the faces in Sderot when the new war began last week, you would have seen people smiling,” not because of the war, said the woman, but because there was a glimmer of hope that the rockets would cease. “Finally, the rest of the country remembered us, and we were happy.
