Sderot, and the horrors of being an unrecognized victim

Sderot is a small town of about 20,000 citizens located in the southern portion of Israels population belt, just north of the Negev desert.

It lies roughly one kilometer from Nahal Oz, a town in the Gaza Strip.

To try and paint the picture, what separates these two towns is a four lane highway and the usual roadway detritus, shoulders and some dirt on either side. Nahal Oz is slight hidden from Sderot by some low ( perhaps 25 feet) hills.

For those NY, it is perhaps the distance from Central Part West to 5th Avenue but instead of Central Park separating them, it is open ground.

I have attached an aerial photo from Google Earth here. The superimposed line is .9 miles long. It extends from the nearest power tower in Sderot to the first large apartment complex in Nahal.

In the last two days, Sderot has been hit by 30 Qassam rockets from Nahal and elsewhere in the Gaza strip.

That is shocking to say the least. But just as important. Since the start of the second intifada, it has been every day by rockets.

In the barrage of the last two days, a kindergarten was specifically targeted.

Luckily for the residents of Sderot, until recently, the Qassams had poor targeting systems.

However, that is changing.

Imagine living in small town, knowing that every day, somewhere, at some point during your day, a rocket would land somewhere close.

Incredibly, the Defense Minister of Israel, Amir Peretz, lives in Sderot.

Imagine if the US Secretary of Defense was getting bombed every day in Washington.

What type of restraint do you think the US would show towards the shooters.

The increase in the last day was a perverse attempt by Hamas to draw the Israeli's back into Gaza militarily. Their goal was to rally all the citizens against Israel in order to distract them from the current fighting between Hamas and Fatah.

The quagmire that Israel faces is simple. Do you go in, guns blazing and once again clear out Gaza, thereby both earning, yet again, the condemnation of the world, with all the commensurate false stories about civilian deaths, barbarism, etc. as well as suffering additional casualties.

Or, do you let the fighting go on, with the increase shelling of one of your towns.

Of course, the whole issue might be moot if the Egyptian authorities that patrol the Philadelphia corridor on the Sinai side of the Gaza strip as agreed to in the Israeli with drawl agreement, actually stopped the rockets from coming in.