Despite the fragile truce with Hamas, the emotional wounds in Sderot haven't healed.
By JENNA HANSONjenna88(photo credit: )Extract from Issue 16, November 24, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Reportclick here.
It is recess time on a hot September afternoon at the Yigal Alon Elementary School for Sciences. Inside the fenced-in school courtyard, a group of boys kick a soccer ball back and forth. On a grassy area in the shade within the courtyard, created by the armored rocket protection that extends over the roof of the school towards the street, some girls arm-wrestle playfully, giggling continuously. Others run around in a wild game of tag that has targeted the smallest girl in the group. Three teachers stand at the main entrance to the school, talking among themselves while glancing around intermittently to make sure the kids are alright.
A regular recess, in a normal school - except that this is the first year in 8 years that the children are allowed to spend recess time outside of their classrooms.
This is Sderot, a dusty industrial development town, with a mostly lower-middle class population of 19,300, located in the southwestern Negev region. Between 2001 and June 2008, and particularly in 2005 in the wake of Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip, Sderot held the dubious distinction of being the country's most dangerous city, targeted incessantly by more than 8,000 Qassam rockets and mortars fired from the Gaza Strip, two kilometers (less than one mile) away.
Homes, schools, offices, factories and a local synagogue were hit, injuring over 400 people and killing 15, including four children in Sderot alone.
The tahadiyeh, the truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, signed in June, has - more or less - put a temporary end to the constant shelling. It is this tense, relative quiet that enabled the school year to open, seemingly without incident, for the 3,569 students in Sderot's public schools.
Recess over, the kids file back into their classrooms. This year, all of the classrooms are now painted a bright, cheery shade of blue - which, the students all know - also indicates that the rooms have been reinforced and provide a safe space in case the tahadiyeh doesn't hold, and the rockets return, as they have some 30 times since the signing of the truce.
The quiet is deceptive. Even as most of the children enjoy the re-found freedom of being outside again, according to a recent study conducted by Natal, the Israeli Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War, conducted in 2007 at the height of the rocket barrages, between 74 and 93 percent of all children ages to 12-18 in Sderot suffered from post-traumatic symptoms, the psychological scars of all those years under fire.
And residents know that even if Hamas doesn't initiate the resumption of fire, as long as soldier Gilad Shalit, who was taken prisoner by Hamas two and a half years ago, remains a hostage, the threat of an all-out offensive into Gaza in order to release him is ever present. Residents have no doubt that such military action will lead to massive shelling of their city.
"This year we play outside during recess," says Nir Swisa, 11, who has just started sixth grade. Swisa speaks softly yet directly and, at 11, exudes the maturity of someone much older. "We play soccer, but we are a little scared when we play. We are scared the rockets will start again."
"Kids are growing up with the feeling that they live in a world that is not safe, and that not even their parents can protect them," says psychologist Dalia Yosef, 41, director of the Chosin Center for Trauma Victims. "A young boy sees his mother trying to cope [when there is an alert], but all she can do is take her children and run to the shelter. The child realizes that the parent cannot protect him. The children often hate to leave their parents in the morning and some children show their anxiety in physical ways - hair loss, asthma and skin blemishes."
But children in Sderot grow up with another form of vulnerability that adds to the severity of their symptoms. A peripheral border town, far from the centers of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Sderot has long been neglected by Israel's political, economic and social establishment. With its large immigrant population, it has always been in need of extensive social services, but even through the worst of the bombardments, the state has provided little of the precious resources that the residents would need to cope with the widespread trauma.
In 2006, the Regional Parents' Committee had to petition the High Court of Justice to force the government to provide armored protection from rockets at all schools in Sderot. Until that point, most schools were not protected, says Benny Markovitch, 49, current head of the Parents' Committee. "Today, even though the court ruled in our favor," Markovitch, the father of three children, ages 9, 12 and 20, says bitterly, "the job is not finished. Some schools are still without protection or are only partially protected."
There were years when Sderot was known as an alternative center of cultural and artistic activity, producing such popular Israeli rock groups as Tea-Packs and Knesiat Hasechel and musicians such as Shimon Boskila and Kobi Oz, among others. But that was before the bombardments that began in 2001.
Today, the education and social welfare systems are in tatters, without enough personnel or resources to provide for the children or the adults. Many public spaces and private homes are still without shelters, and the town looks timeworn and in serious need of maintenance. Municipal elections, slated for mid-November, bring a sliver of hope, with five candidates promising new priorities and a dramatic make-over of the town.
Under the almost daily barrage, residents of Sderot had developed a routine, of sorts: Even small children knew to release their seat belts when approaching the city, so that they would be able to scurry quickly to a safer place, just as they knew that the "Code Red" siren blasting over loudspeakers throughout the city meant that they had 20 seconds to get to the nearest shelter.
"When we would hear the Code Red, we would run down to the shelter and wait," explains Swisa, distantly, as if he has suddenly been transported to another time and place. "If it happened at school, we would go under our desks. About half a year ago half of a Qassam fell on our house. It hit another house, broke in two and then bounced into our house. We were in the shelter when it happened. It really scared me.
After that, my family left Sderot for a while. We went to my grandmother's, my aunt's, each time to a different place. I really didn't want to go back to Sderot. I wanted to be as far away as possible. And then the day I finally went back to school, a Qassam fell at school. I was really scared. I cried. My dad tried really hard to find an apartment to rent somewhere else, but he didn't find one."
"Two years ago, I was driving to work when a Qassam fell on my car," relays Gila Mizrachi, 44, who works at the metal factory on Kibbutz Re'im, a 25 minute drive southwest of Sderot. Alone in her car, Mizrachi was badly shaken but unhurt, as the rocket miraculously bounced off the hood of her car.
"This really traumatized my kids. They were very worried about me all the time. They would ask me to call them when I would enter and exit the dangerous part of the road," she says referring to the section of her drive to work that is within direct Qassam range. They still have a monthly pass to the psychologist," she jokes sadly.
Mizrahi says her four children, aged 14, 18, 21, and 23 know that this reality has had a negative effect on their health. "One of my daughters has terrible concentration problems, which developed over the years of shelling," she relays. "During her matriculation exams there was a red alert, and the kids had to run out to the shelter and then return and write the test afterwards. How is she supposed to succeed?"
Mizrachi's youngest son has just started 9th grade. She is not hopeful that he will be able to spend his breaks outside for much longer. "We call them 'the children of the shelters'" she says. "They have spent their childhood running from shelter to shelter. What kind of a life is that?"
Even now, Sderot has only 100 public shelters, most of which are mobile shelters - small trailers fortified against rockets - and most of which are donated by funds from abroad. With much work left to be done in order to properly protect all schools from rockets, outgoing Mayor Eli Moyal says that the city is waiting for funding from the government. "It is not the municipality which provides such funds," he says. "Ask the government where the money is." Ifat Lipner, Ministry of Education spokeswoman, says that special funding is being budgeted for the protection of schools in Sderot, but declines to provide an exact figure.
Nor can their parents reassure them or ease their sense of vulnerability. The Qassams are more deadly than ever before: The first Qassams had a range of only about 4 kilometers (2.48 miles), with a warhead of about 2 pounds of homemade explosives. But by the time the tahadiyeh came into effect, the range had grown to about 9 kilometers (5.58 miles) with a sophisticated payload of more than 6 pounds of TNT. As Hamas continues to control Gaza, few believe that the cease-fire will last.
For now, Code Red doesn't echo daily through abandoned streets anymore. The outdoor markets are crowded again and the parking lot in the town's small and only mall is full. Elderly men have returned to sit on the sidewalk benches, smoking and gossiping loudly. Over the Sukkot holiday, the town sponsored a sold-out open air festival, with ethnic foods and top-billed Israeli performances, some of it broadcast live on Israeli TV.
Says Judith Bar-Chai, 45, coordinator of a mobile therapy unit run by Natal, which provides psychological services in the clients' homes, "We are living in an illusion of normalcy." And even that illusion, she warns, is tenuous at best.
Extract from Issue 16, November 24, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Reportclick here.
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