Sderot and Gaza Seminar

To learn more about the Gaza situation and its effects on Sderot, a city that borders the Gaza Strip, we went to Sderot for a seminar. Learning about the situation in the place where the historical moments, wars, etc occurred is so much more powerful than learning from afar. Sderot is mostly inhabited by Moroccan immigrants and is constantly under threat of Kassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. Every home has a bomb shelter, as do buildings and parks. We were lucky to be able to visit for the day, since it's been relatively calm there over the past 6 months.

View of the Gaza Strip Border (~2 miles away)

When we first arrived in Sderot, we went to Beit Chabad to hear a little about Sderot's history before and after the 2005 disengagement from Gaza. The speaker was from an organization called Kol Voice (all the voices) and we learned a lot about the past decade of life in Sderot. Basically, people live their normal, everyday lives, and when they hear the rocket siren they have 15 seconds to get to a bomb shelter. Once they hear the explosion, they go back outside and carry on with whatever they were doing. A very, very difficult way of life, and extremely emotional and stressful for families and their children.
Our next speaker was from the Sderot Media Center, and he was a journalist that talked more about the rockets and life in Sderot from the perspective of a journalist. At the time of the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, the country was split in half between those in support and those against it. The supporters all wore blue ribbons/ tied them to windows, cars, wherever they could. Those in opposition did the same thing but with orange. The result was a country that was half blue and half orange (Ray Bucknell!). If you were in Israel in 2005, you would see the mobs of blue and orange and the different protests.
Finally, we met two representatives from Other Voice, which is a group of Israelis that communicate with Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, mostly by phone and email. They hope to establish connections and that the groups will see some similarities in their lives being surrounded by the rockets and fighting. One woman spoke about how she lived in Egypt for 4 years with her husband and children. Her 5 year old daughter became good friends with a Palestinian girl in her class at school, but the girl's mother would not let this woman's daughter go to her daughter's birthday party at her house because 'their people hate each other.' This went on for some time, and the girls' teacher did lots of lessons in the classroom about accepting differences and not hating people. Finally, it was the Israeli girls birthday and she wanted to invite the Palestinian girl to her birthday party. The girl's mother would not let her go to an Israeli's house, but she agreed to let her go if the party was in a restaurant. Eventually, the girls started to be allowed in each other's houses and their families became good friends. The girls even became regulars at each other's houses. This took 3 years to progress, but both mothers were amazed looking back, since they never dreamed they'd be so close with a family they were supposed to hate on principle. After the speakers, we stopped at the police station to see some of the kassam missiles that have been collected over the years. They're about 3 feet long but can do a lot of damage.

Kassam Rockets Collected at the Police Station

We took a break for some falafel after a long, intense morning, then dove right back in. We went on a security tour of Sderot and went to a viewpoint about 2 miles from the Gaza Strip. We heard some more stories, took some pictures, and got back on the bus. Our next stop was Nitzan, a community of people that were evacuated from Gaza in 2005. They were forced to leave by their own people, which was an extremely emotional situation for the whole country. The soldiers that evacuated them could have had family and friends there, and thankfully everyone cooperated and left their homes peacefully. The people in Nitzan live in temporary homes given to them by the government when they were forced to leave Gaza in 2005. Their homes are tiny apartments, but they are building them large homes now, somewhat subsidized by the government. It's been 5 years since they left Gaza, so it's about time they have a real home to start their lives again. Many of them were farmers, so they have to learn a new trade, although a lot of them are 45-55 years old and don't want to change their occupation.
It was a very informative, intense day, and we're all still formulating opinions about the situation and digesting all the information we were given.