Living in fear in city of rockets
Residents of southern Israeli town in constant state of apprehension
Sderot , Israe l —The children’s playground was nearly deserted at lunchtime when a ball of fire hurtled across the sky.
Leaving a puffy, winding trail in its wake, the rocket briefly mesmerized those who witnessed it before the spell was broken by loudspeakers.
“Red alert! Red alert!” the voice screamed in Hebrew and those few people still in the streets sprinted toward air raid shelters.
Inside, faces betrayed the panic that rocket attacks from Gaza on the town of Sderot in southern Israel have instilled over recent days.
The sound of an explosion came just seconds after a taxi driver dived inside. Another resounding boom followed, then another, then three more. “It’s close, in the neighbourhood,” he said. “And it’s a hit for sure.”
As the alert ended, Itamar Zolberg, 31, a father of three, stepped out of his house to see what had happened, carefully avoiding a dent in the road where another rocket from Gaza landed several years ago.
In the distance, several black plumes of smoke rose high. The nearby fields were on fire either from the rocket itself or the result of falling shrapnel after an interception by Iron Dome, Israel’s missile defence system.
Shortly before this drama, Zolberg and his wife, Naomi, had described their experiences of rocket fire.
Last week, driving from their house to pick up family from the train station, a trip that typically takes five minutes, Naomi Zolberg, 30, had to stop twice for air raid sirens.
“Once, I was able to run into a shelter. But the second time, there was nothing around. I just threw myself on the grass, and covered my head,” she said.
On Monday, hearing sirens while in the car and with no shelter to be found nearby, she put her children — ages five, three and 10 months — down on the pavement and covered them with her body.
“I was absolutely terrified. You feel so helpless and so exposed,” she said.
Itamar Zolberg said: “It’s important to keep as calm as possible for the children. If we’re stressed then they get stressed. So we act as if we are fine, but inside I feel my whole body is clenched up and my heart jumps at every sound.”
As a social worker, Naomi Zolberg sees many people, some of them teenagers, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after yearslong exposure to rockets and sirens in Sderot.
“My daughter is too scared to take a shower alone,” she said.
Sderot is known as the city of rockets because of its proximity to the Gaza Strip. It has been hit by hundreds of them in recent years.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has promised military action “until the fire on our communities is over and the quiet is back.”