Jerusalem – As Palestinian rockets were falling on the Israeli border town of Sderot earlier this year, people turned to the community’s most powerful citizen, Defense Minister Amir Pertez, to demand protection.
“All my friends would come to demonstrate against me outside my house,” Peretz, a former mayor of the town, recalled. “They asked why I was not sending in the army in full force.”
This week, Sderot’s 24,000 nerve-racked inhabitants got what they wanted – an assault by hundreds of infantry troops on nearby Beit Hanoun, the Gaza Strip launching ground for most of the Kassam rockets that Palestinian militants lob into Israel almost daily.
The soldiers, who moved in Wednesday with tanks and helicopter gunships, remained in control of the town early today.
But instead of relief, the beleaguered Israeli community, where six townspeople have been killed during nearly three years of attacks, only got more rockets. It was the largest two- day barrage in months.
Since the start of the Israeli siege, militants elsewhere in Gaza have retaliated with at least 17 rocket strikes in or near Sderot, wounding three people; damaging cars, a house and the public library; and forcing some schools to close.
The continuing rain of rockets, crude and imprecise as they are, has baffled Israel’s leadership, raising questions about the effectiveness of the army’s tactics in Gaza and its 2-day-old occupation of Beit Hanoun.
At least nine militants, three Palestinian civilians and one Israeli soldier have been killed in the operation, Israel’s first takeover of an entire Gaza town since its army and settlers unilaterally pulled out of the coastal territory in September of last year.
