I recently took a trip with the Israeli Defense College to the South near Gaza, where we were educated on some of the different dynamics of this particular region of Israel.
We were briefed just outside the Gaza Strip. Israelis have a troubled history with this particular piece of land that dates back about 3,000 years. Biblically, it is where where Samson was killed (Judges 16:30). Today, it is isolated from Israel proper and ruled by the Islamic group Hamas. They were elected to power in 2007 and they seek to establish an Islamic Palestinian state. They are the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Gaza Strip is pictured above. It is the Western most point in Israel (across from the Dead Sea). Gaza's actual population is unknown. Depending on the sources, it's somewhere between 1.4 - 2.3 million people. Liberals say more, Israeli supporters say less. Since the numbers are so politically charged, no one has done an actual census there since the late 60s.
Gaza shares a small border with Egypt to the Sinai desert. There are smuggling tunnels from Gaza to Egypt big enough to drive trucks through. Despite an active black market in goods and products, Gaza's primary export is rockets.
This is a small portion of the thousands of rockets that have been fired into the town of Sderot since '01. Many of them are smuggled into Gaza in pieces. None are guided. Some have even been made from streetlight posts that were chopped up and made into projectile weapons. Not surprisingly, Gaza is dark at night.
Because different groups claim responsibility for the attacks, Qassam rockets are usually found with the name of the Jihadi militia who fired them--sometimes written in Hebrew.
Here we viewing Sderot, situated on the NE corner of the Gaza strip. This town faces unique security challenges due to it's location just outside of Gaza.
This is a new school built in Sderot. Notice how the windows are shielded from the sky. What's wrong in this picture?
Below is one of 4 bomb shelters on the school grounds (reinforced concrete always looks better when it's painted happy sky colors, right?)
The main building took a direct hit last year. Fortunately, school was not in session and no children were harmed.
In fact, the windows did not even break. The school was designed to withstand exactly such a blast. Even the glass is bullet-proof and resisted the bomb's shrapnel.
Over 8,500 rockets have been launched at Israeli towns in the south since 2001. While most of them land 'in open fields', some of them have caused damage and loss of life.
Iron Dome
This is a nifty new Israeli defense system that can track and intercept Quassam rockets in midair. It's so effective that the US has agreed to fund the next purchase w/ $205 million dollars of military aid. The system works well for northern cities, where there is adequate time to lock on and destroy targets. Residents of Sderot, however, only get 15 seconds between the alert and impact.
Although more advanced missiles can almost reach Tel Aviv, that has yet to occur. In general, the big-city-dwellers like us rarely think of these things, but residents closer to Gaza live with this threat looming constantly. Each house in Sderot has a fully-functional safe room, built by the government since 2001, and residents must regularly run to take cover there. Although casualties have been relatively few (22 in roughly 11 years), there seems to be no end in sight for the hostilities.
This trip was an eye-opening experience for me. I was reminded of the fragility of the situation here in Israel, and how easily I had succumb to the Tel Aviv 'bubble' mentality. I had grown nonchalant about serious problems that real people are facing in this country, Arab and Israeli alike. Not only are some Israeli's living under threat of random rocket attacks every day, there are Palestinians angry enough to saw down street-lamps and shoot them at their neighbors.
In short...it's a total mess.
Shalom Y'all,
Stew
