SDEROT REFLECTION: Where rockets still fall
"CPTnet
31 August 2007
SDEROT REFLECTION: Where rockets still fall
By John Lynes
Sderot is a pleasant Israeli town close to the Gaza Strip. It seems almost deserted during the day, but comes to life in the evening. Few outside of Palestine and Israel had heard of Sderot until a couple of years ago.
Nowadays it is front-page news, under frequent bombardment by homemade Palestinian Qassam rockets fired from the nearby Gaza Strip.
Some months ago, several CPTers independently wondered about the possibility of a permanent CPT presence in Sderot, were we to be invited. We discussed the question in Hebron and by email. Personally, I was strongly in favour, not least because I had been in London, England, in the 1940s while German rockets were falling, and I know how it feels. Several teammates were less certain. So I was happy when Sean (a doubter) and I paid a quiet visit to Sderot last week.
We met several victims, notably a fifty-year-old Israeli who spent two months in a coma after shrapnel penetrated his stomach. We also met one of his neighbours, a ninety-three-year old woman from England who showed us where a Qassam rocket had damaged her home. She had survived the London Blitz and was undeterred by Palestinian rockets, but anxious for the future of her children and grandchildren.
A first-aid worker told us to expect a wave of rockets in retaliation for an Israeli attack on Gaza the previous day. While we were wandering, a Qassam rocket hit an empty kindergarten building close by. I'm ashamed to confess we were so inured to casual gunfire in Hebron that the thump barely registered, but we hastened to photograph the damage. In the police station, we were shown the carcasses of hundreds of Qassams that had hit Sderot.
On the day after we left, seven more Qassam rockets struck Sderot, including four by the kibbutz where we had stayed the night before.
Our conclusion? The Israelis we spoke to were all welcoming and glad to share their anxieties and their longing for peace. We were both glad to have made the journey, but the violence-reduction techniques we use in Hebron would not apply to Sderot. All we could do is to show solidarity with Israeli victims of violence, and this would not justify a continued presence.
Please remember the children growing up in Sderot. And their anxious parents and grandparents. And of course their neighbours on the other side of the Gaza border, whose despair and powerlessness directs those rockets.
They all cry out for our prayerful understanding.
For pictures of our visit to Sderot, please see http://www.cpt.org/gallery/album220"
31 August 2007
SDEROT REFLECTION: Where rockets still fall
By John Lynes
Sderot is a pleasant Israeli town close to the Gaza Strip. It seems almost deserted during the day, but comes to life in the evening. Few outside of Palestine and Israel had heard of Sderot until a couple of years ago.
Nowadays it is front-page news, under frequent bombardment by homemade Palestinian Qassam rockets fired from the nearby Gaza Strip.
Some months ago, several CPTers independently wondered about the possibility of a permanent CPT presence in Sderot, were we to be invited. We discussed the question in Hebron and by email. Personally, I was strongly in favour, not least because I had been in London, England, in the 1940s while German rockets were falling, and I know how it feels. Several teammates were less certain. So I was happy when Sean (a doubter) and I paid a quiet visit to Sderot last week.
We met several victims, notably a fifty-year-old Israeli who spent two months in a coma after shrapnel penetrated his stomach. We also met one of his neighbours, a ninety-three-year old woman from England who showed us where a Qassam rocket had damaged her home. She had survived the London Blitz and was undeterred by Palestinian rockets, but anxious for the future of her children and grandchildren.
A first-aid worker told us to expect a wave of rockets in retaliation for an Israeli attack on Gaza the previous day. While we were wandering, a Qassam rocket hit an empty kindergarten building close by. I'm ashamed to confess we were so inured to casual gunfire in Hebron that the thump barely registered, but we hastened to photograph the damage. In the police station, we were shown the carcasses of hundreds of Qassams that had hit Sderot.
On the day after we left, seven more Qassam rockets struck Sderot, including four by the kibbutz where we had stayed the night before.
Our conclusion? The Israelis we spoke to were all welcoming and glad to share their anxieties and their longing for peace. We were both glad to have made the journey, but the violence-reduction techniques we use in Hebron would not apply to Sderot. All we could do is to show solidarity with Israeli victims of violence, and this would not justify a continued presence.
Please remember the children growing up in Sderot. And their anxious parents and grandparents. And of course their neighbours on the other side of the Gaza border, whose despair and powerlessness directs those rockets.
They all cry out for our prayerful understanding.
For pictures of our visit to Sderot, please see http://www.cpt.org/gallery/album220"
posted by dm at 9:46 AM
2 Comments:
"...but the violence-reduction techniques we use in Hebron would not apply to Sderot. All we could do is to show solidarity with Israeli victims of violence, and this would not justify a continued presence."
As an ignorant bystander, I'm wondering, is this a defeatist or realistic conclusion? I'm uncomfortable with it.
-A
I think the conclusion is that in Hebron CPT can interact directly with all sides of the conflict, face to face. In Sderot, they could stand with the Israelis who are being bombed (but never interact with the attackers), which is a nobel thing to do, from one angle, but which isn't exactly the mandate of CPT? My thought is, if you could pop across the border (ha. ha.) and spend one week from where the bombs are coming from, and the next in Sderot, and so forth...This isn't exactly thought out, I was just trying to figure out if there was a way to interact directly with the attackers in this case.
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