I live in the Israeli town of Sderot. Sderot is a small town in the northern corner of the Negev Desert. It borders on the Gaza Strip, which is only a couple of miles away. This closeness makes Sderot an inviting target for Arab terrorists to shoot at. Those who shoot at us are mostly Hamas, but Islamic Jihad and other Moslem terror organizations join in the fun as well.
We are generally hit with rockets known as Kassams. These rockets are primitive and have a short range and little accuracy. Kassams are of slight military value, because they cannot be properly aimed, and they do not go very far. They are good for only one purpose: Terror attacks on civilians. The target is a town. The enemy has chosen this town because it is so close to the border, and therefore to them, and because Sderot is big enough for them not to miss. The Arabs do not aim at a particular building, but rather at the town itself. Their rockets have a reasonable likelihood of landing within city limits. Because Sderot is a pleasant, green town with many open spaces and parks, most rockets do not strike a building, nor do they wound or kill anybody. When the alarm goes off that informs us that we have between twelve and twenty seconds to take cover, none of us knows whether this rocket will be one of the many that makes a tremendous explosion that terrifies many inhabitants, or one of those that comes through the roof of somebody's house and kills him, as has happened a number of times.
The people who live here are Israelis, mostly immigrants, their children and grandchildren, who moved here from Morocco and other countries during the 1950's. Sderot is small enough so that most families tend to know each other; one does not speak of "the street named X", but rather "near the Y family". More recent waves of immigrants include Kavkazim, who are Jews from the Caucasus Mountains in Dagestan, in what used to be the USSR, and Ethiopian Jews.
When I first arrived, I thought that the rockets were the major story, but I have learned that the lives of these people are not less important. The real story requires a synthesis between the two: how an occasional rocket exploding in the neighborhood affects daily life, and how people have adapted themselves to terror bombing during the seven years since the enemy began shooting at their homes.
Ordinary people are being denied ordinary lives. They do however continue to work and to live. I have been part of that life for about four months. I hope to present it in a book, and also in this blog.
