On a parched strip of the Israeli/Palestinian border, a dustbowl frontier town has a unique boast: per head of population, it is the most heavily bombed in the world.
.... my guide has insisted on talking me through the local ground rules ...:
1. I am not to fasten my seat belt. This is the only place in Israel where seat belts are forbidden. Buckling up prevents drivers and their passengers getting out of a vehicle quickly.
2. I am not to play my car radio. It may drown out the warnings.
3. I am not to have a shower if there is nobody else in the house to hear the alarms. Last month, a woman who ignored this rule was washing her hair when she was blown off her feet.
4. Be extra vigilant when it's misty. It can confuse the laser-activated warning systems.
And suddenly it comes, a noise like the slamming of a heavy door as a sleek, six-foot-long Qassam rocket bursts into the cloudless blue sky. Its trajectory is marked by a trail of white smoke as it curves towards the town. Almost simultaneously, sirens begin to wail. A woman's urgent voice repeats the words, "Tseva Adom, Tseva Adom," over public address loudspeakers. In Hebrew this means, "Code Red". It signifies a missile is on its way. Sderot's jittery residents have no more than 15 seconds to take cover before the rocket hits.
On this occasion, they will have to wait there for a long time. For the next 72 hours Code Red alerts will sound almost continuously; Islamic militant groups in Gaza have begun raining the first of more than 100 rockets on to the town during a terrifying three-day attack.....
....many residents wonder aloud how much longer they can endure life under fire in what some describe, with gallows humour, as "the biggest bull's-eye on the map of Israel". Because of its proximity to the border and the concentration of Hamas-led amateur bomb-makers on the other side, Sderot has a unique civic claim: on a rocket-per-head-of-population basis, it is the most targeted town in Israel, indeed the world.
It is more than six years since the first rocket was launched from Gaza. Since then, well over 2,000 Qassams – named after a fiery Muslim preacher – have landed in or around the town killing 13 people (including four children) and injuring several dozen more. Since the beginning of this year, at least 300 rockets have been fired.
...But beyond the grim arithmetic of body counts, Sderot is a special case because nowhere else in Israel do ordinary people face the draining pressure of coping day in, day out with the fear that a rocket could fall at any moment. "Everybody here lives on the very edge of their nerves," says Noam Bedein, a young Israeli journalist who moved to Sderot several years ago. "The peak time for Qassam attacks is while people are going to and from work and at the beginning and end of school. "Believe me, that really grinds you down, mentally and physically."
While the psychological fall-out from the rocket attacks affects young and old, poor and prosperous alike, the cruellest impact has been on Sderot's children. A recent survey concluded that almost one-third of those aged between four and 18 now suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, while many more exhibit the symptoms of severe anxiety and feelings of helplessness that warn of more serious problems to come.
The fact that ten-year-olds receive daily tranquillisers demonstrates how they are being robbed of a normal childhood.
Children are evacuated from school during a rocket attack
Only in Sderot will you find school runs conducted with military precision, as security guards rush children to and from coaches and parents' cars at staggered intervals to guard against a Qassam falling among a crowd......
....The sensation of living in and moving about Sderot is unique.
At the open-air market, there is none of the cheerful hubbub found in other Israeli towns, no blaring radios or raucous stallholders.
....In the courtyard of Sderot's police station, where scores of rocket casings are stacked on shelves, each numbered and dated, a young woman officer of Ethiopian descent displays the scorched and twisted remains of a Qassam launched the previous day.
Israeli policewoman Sara Vavshet and a yard full of spent Qassam rockets
Sara Vavshet points out the slogan in Arabic painted on its fuselage, explaining that "each of the terrorist organisations uses its own colours and emblems, and they sometimes send threatening messages in Hebrew" (the Hamas faction that now rules Gaza favours the red, green and white of the Palestinian flag).....
....Yet for all that, something akin to the spirit of the London Blitz persists in Sderot, whether it is the elderly Russian immigrants drinking tea in the cafés and insisting that they will stay put....
......One afternoon while I was in Sderot, a battered truck pulled up in the town centre and disgorged several Orthodox Jews in their trademark long black coats and broad brimmed hats.
A sound system was quickly erected and started blasting out Israeli folk songs at top volume while they capered around on the pavement, curly side locks swinging. Pausing for breath, their leader told me that it was their mission to bring a little light relief to Sderot's residents.....
...And then there is the mayor, Eli Moyal, a fast-talking lawyer who was born and bred in the town and likes to recall that when he took the job a decade ago, "I thought I'd be dealing with stuff like schools, leisure centres and rubbish collection."
An accomplished self-publicist, Moyal announced his resignation last December in protest against Government inaction, then allowed himself to be persuaded to stay. He has staged "Solidarity with Sderot" demonstrations all over Israel, and once led a march of residents to the border with the Gaza Strip to brandish mocked-up Qassams at the Palestinian side.
When a TV reporter informed him that Hamas leaders had threatened to drive the Jews out of Sderot, he seized the microphone and announced: "I am Eli Moyal, looking straight into the eyes of the terrorists to tell them that we've been standing firm against their rockets for the past seven years. "We will do so for the next seven hundred."
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