In response to increasing and constant rocket fire into communities along the Gaza border, residents are leaving and heading for safer areas, explaining that are unwilling to place their children in perilous danger. The erev Shabbos death of Nachal Ohz resident Daniel Tragerman HY”D from a mortar rocket was the last straw for many residents.
While there is no official order to evacuate, local officials are assisting families to pack and move out as the situation in those areas is untenable. In many if not most cases, mortar rockets land without warning, compelling residents to remain in shelters. Even in cases when sirens sound, there is often less than 15 seconds to run for cover, not permitting residents to move too far from a shelter.
There is a growing anti-government sentiment among the residents of those communities; with many feeling they have been abandoned. The overwhelming support Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu enjoyed a number of weeks ago is waning as clearly, he failed to bring an end to the rocket fire. Many now feel that the talk of the terror tunnels during stage one of Operation Protective Edge was simply a diversion by the prime minister, who clearly avoided addressing the matter of ongoing rocket fire.
At the start of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, 28 Menachem Av, Prime Minister Netanyahu said “First of all, I would like to send my condolences to the family of Daniel Tragerman. His mother Gila described her eldest son as a beautiful, clever and sensitive boy. Like you, I have seen the pictures of four-and-a-half-year-old Daniel, a sweet and innocent boy who was murdered by the firing of reprehensible Hamas terrorists.
“Hamas is paying and will yet pay a heavy price for the crimes that it has perpetrated. I call on the residents of Gaza to immediately evacuate any building from which Hamas is carrying out terrorist activity. Any such place is a target for us. In recent days we have proven there is no immunity for those who fire at Israel’s citizens. This is true in all sectors and regarding all borders. We are determined to complete the mission. We are patient. Operation Protective Edge will continue until its goals are achieved. I said on the first day of the operation that it could take time and we are prepared that this campaign might continue even after the start of the school year.
“I would like to say a few words to the residents of the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip, the communities and the kibbutzim. I appreciate your resilience. I appreciate your suffering and I share your pain. We will do our utmost to help you through these difficult days. At the next Cabinet meeting, we will approve an extraordinary package of assistance for your communities. We are with you and we will stay with you until quiet is achieved, and afterwards as well.
“We embarked on Operation Protective Edge in order to restore quiet and security to you and to all Israeli citizens. We will not complete the mission, we will not complete the operation, until this goal is achieved. The more determined and patient we are, the more our enemies will understand that they will not succeed in wearing us down. Against their attrition, they will be struck very hard. I think that anyone who looks back over recent days will see the significance of this. The IDF is continuing to strike very hard at Hamas and the other terrorist organizations in Gaza and will continue to do so until the goal is achieved. In this struggle we are on a broad front. Many states in the region and in the West are beginning to understand that this is a single front, that Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas. They act in the same way. They are branches of the same poisonous tree. They are two extremist Islamic terrorist movements that abduct and murder innocents, that execute their own people, that shrink at nothing including the willful murder of children. In recent days we heard from Hamas spokesmen that they admit to what we have been saying all along, that they murdered Eyal, Gilad and Naftali. Both movements are, in effect, making an effort to establish Islamic rule, caliphates, without human rights, across wide areas, by slaughtering minorities, by not respecting the human rights of anyone – neither women nor men, nor children, nor Christians, nobody. With every passing day the world understands more and more that Hamas operates like ISIS and that ISIS operates like Hamas. The State of Israel will continue to stand alongside the civilized world in its war against extremist and violent Islam.”
Many residents explain they are not interested in hearing how hard the IDF is pounding Hamas or how many sorties are being carried out by the IDF. They simply continue waiting to see a halt in rocket fire into their communities.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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One Response
Stop talking stop “pounding” just start totaaly destrying till they realize that they themselves will get destroyed and not just their people whom they dont care about anyway