In first, Gaza border resident addresses UNSC
Peace can only come to Israel’s south once Hamas allows Gazans to thrive instead of investing solely in terrorism, Adele Raemer, a resident of Kibbutz Nirim, told the UN Security Council in its periodic hearing on the Middle East on Wednesday.
Raemer, the first Israeli from near the Gaza border to address the Security Council, did so at the invitation of US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft, who is serving as president of the Security Council this month.
“Have you ever had to run for your life?” Raemer asked. “When I hear the red alert early warning system for rockets, I have five to ten seconds to get somewhere safe… If it catches me in the shower, I’m out of luck.”
Raemer, who has lived in the region since 1975 and runs the popular “Life on the Border with Gaza” Facebook group with almost 5,000 members that describes life under the shadow of terrorism, pointed out that there were 11 rounds of escalated rocket fire in the last year and a half, with multiple rocket barrages each day and 1,800
rockets in the Eshkol Regional Council alone.
“What would any of you do if this number of projectiles was launched over your border?” she asked.
Raemer accused Hamas of placing their attacks against Israel before the well-being of its own people. “Luckily for me, my government builds us safe rooms,” she said. “Hamas, on the other hand, builds safe rooms to protect their weapons. Hamas brings Gazans to border
riots to lose limb or life. Hamas aims rockets at Israeli civilian communities from within schools, mosques and homes, knowing full well that the IDF is reluctant to retaliate, knowing that civilians can be harmed.”
Still, not all Gazans are like Hamas, Raemer said. “Most Gazans want the same things as I do – safety for their children, food on their tables and to enable their children to have a horizon of hope.”
Raemer’s two grandchildren are much less safe on Kibbutz Nirim now than her children were when they grew up there. However, contact with Gazans who take great risks to educate their children differently has given Raemer hope for the future.
“It’s only a fence that divides us, really,” she said. “The only solution is for us to live together.”
Raemer said the mayors of the Western Negev “extended their hands in peace and collaboration” and have plans to help provide Gazans with electricity, backed by Arab and European donors, because the Fatah-Hamas dispute has left Gazans with breaks in electricity.
“If we want our lives to be good and for our region to thrive and prosper, we need to see to it that our neighbors can thrive and prosper,” she said. “I hold Hamas responsible for finding a way to stop investing in terrorism, incitement and hatred and start making choices for the people of Gaza to thrive and prosper.”
Raemer also told her personal story from Operation Protective Edge, during which shrapnel from a mortar shot into her bedroom. “It could have killed me, had I been in my bedroom rather than in my safe room,” she recalled. “Here I am, fiveand-a-half-years after that bloody summer…and nothing has changed. If anything, it’s worse.”
The Western Negev resident mentioned the forms of terror Gazans have launched in recent years, including 17
terror tunnels into Israel over the past two years, weekly riots at the border, and incendiary projectiles – including booby-trapped toys and books.
As for the tunnels, they are “sinister and frightening, developed solely for the purposes of death.” She said, “Can you imagine how our children feel when they know terrorists can come bursting through a tunnel under our community at any time?”
The threats “throw a shadow over our lives,” Raemer said.
Most of the UN Security Council’s members did not address Raemer’s remarks at all in their subsequent comments, making boilerplate calls for an end to the “occupation” and Palestinian statehood, and for Israel not to use proportionate force.
Noting that condemnations of Israel are commonplace in the UN, Craft questioned whether the UNSC cares that “unguided rocket fire [is part of] daily life for hundreds of thousands of people, Israeli and Palestinian.”
“Will this council also condemn them? Will this council even take them seriously?” she asked.
A two-state solution, Craft added, “will only be forged when the two parties can return to the negotiating table. For that to happen, this council must take more seriously the threat of violence from Gaza, especially from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
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