Israel ravaged by rockets
HOLDING a piece of shrapnel, Ochayon Maimon pointed to a hole in the external wall of his laundry room. “In truth, it was a miracle from heaven,” he said, referring to the fact that he wasn’t killed or injured last Friday.
From the point that the potentially lethal shrapnel entered his home in the southern Israel city of Kiryat Gat, you can clearly see the route it took. Across the washing room, through a wall to the lounge, through a picture that now rests on the sofa, on to a brass light fitting where it burned a hole, and into another wall.
Maimon, 64, recalled the moment it entered his home. He was turning off the stove, fearing that gas flow could prove dangerous, as he dashed to his safe room. This meant he was just a few footsteps away from serious injury or death. “Even now I have butterflies in my stomach all the time,” he commented.
Across the street, a neighbour said he too almost experienced tragedy. A rocket smashed into his house just outside his son’s bedroom. Only his son wasn’t there because he turned down a furlough from the army out of a sense of responsibility.
Of course, not everybody has been so lucky. A few kilometres from Maimon’s home, in the town of Kiryat Malachi, you can see a block of flats that has a large chunk missing. This is where three people were killed.
At press time, five Israelis had been killed and 400 injured since the start of Operation Pillar of Defence. The military is massing tens of thousands of troops on the border for a possible ground invasion. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were in Jerusalem trying to facilitate Egyptian attempts to mediate a ceasefire. There was widespread confusion about whether or not an agreement was imminent.
Maimon, typical of the residents of southern Israel, views Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza as legitimate and wants it “to carry on until the rockets stop”. He said he didn’t want to see civilians in Gaza injured and he doesn’t want Israel to take control of Gaza, but he does want quiet. “I don’t want occupation in Gaza, but they should let us live.”
Israel’s leaders take a similar view. “We have no interest and no ambition in conquering land, but we have to stop the firing at our citizens,” Israel’s President Shimon Peres told Quartet envoy Tony Blair on Tuesday. “You clearly understand what it means when mothers can’t sleep at night.”
The West has shown support for Israel’s actions. US President Barack Obama said: “There’s no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders. So we are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself from missiles landing on peoples’ homes and workplaces and potentially killing civilians.”
Pounded by more than 1380 rockets and mortars since Operation Pillar of Defence began, the residents of southern Israel have been trying to continue life with some semblance of normality. But it’s not easy. Schools aren’t operating and with children at home, most people can’t work. Rocket alarms, or “Code Red” alerts as they are called, come thick and fast. If you’re in a building you dive into the shelter; if you’re driving you stop the car, lie on the ground and hope for the best.
In this latest conflict, it isn’t only residents of southern Israel who are dealing with the fear of rockets. Last Thursday, for the first time since the Gulf War, rockets were fired at Tel Aviv. Then last Friday, sirens sounded in Jerusalem. Two rockets have landed near Jerusalem in Gush Etzion, West Bank. Several rockets have headed towards Tel Aviv and other central Israel locales, mostly intercepted by the Iron Dome, but not always. On Tuesday evening a rocket hit a home in Rishon Le-Zion near Tel Aviv, injuring two residents.
This week in central Israel, people were keeping an eye out for bomb shelter signs. In Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Centre mall, cell phone salesman Moran Michael pointed out his escape route to the shelter. “I feel that until now it was limited to the south – now all the country is suffering,” he said.
According to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, at press time the death count there was 130 and 1000 people had been injured. Hamas has expressed fury at Israel for civilian deaths. When nine members of one family, the Dalu family, were killed in a strike on Sunday, Hamas called it a “massacre”, promising it “will not pass without punishment”.
Israel says it has only intended to strike targets associated with the Hamas regime and that harm to civilians is unintentional. It claims that when civilians are harmed, responsibility actually rests on Hamas, due to its tactic of intentionally operating from civilian areas and using civilians as shields.
“The Gaza Strip has been turned into a front line base for Iran, forcing Israeli citizens to live under unbearable circumstances,” the Israeli military has declared in statements, adding that sites targeted have been identified as connected to militant activity “by precise intelligence”.
In terms of Israel’s achievements in the operation, it began by killing Gaza militant Ahmed Jabari. For 10 years Jabari has been acting head of Hamas’s armed wing. When rockets rained down on Israel, he had given the orders, and when Gilad sat for five years in a cell without humanitarian visits, it was on his say-so. He approved the prisoner exchange to free Shalit – personally escorting him to the handover to ensure he took credit.
Israel went on to strike more than 1400 sites where militant activity takes place, and destroy some buildings that were key to the Hamas regime. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Israeli military has achieved “significant hits on weapons aimed at Israeli citizens, as well as on those who use these weapons and those who dispatch them”.
NATHAN JEFFAY
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