Israeli resident tells of life under fire

When the people of Sderot hear the alarm, they know they have no more than 15 seconds to make… When the people of Sderot hear the alarm, they know they have no more than 15 seconds to make it to the safety of a bomb shelter before the rockets hit.

Israeli photojournalist Noam Bedein moved to Sderot a year and a half ago with the intention of showing the world the fear that the people of Sderot live in daily.

Sderot, an Israeli town, is constantly victim to Qassam rocket attacks launched by militants because of its location less than a mile from the border of Gaza.

Bedein gave a presentation on Sderot yesterday in the William Pitt Union.

His photos of the attacks’ damage to the town are currently on display in the Kimbo Art Gallery.

“The Qassam Rockets have two purposes: to kill and to traumatize as many civilians as possible,” Bedein said.

Since Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, 4,000 rockets have been launched into Israel, Bedein added.

So far, 13 people have died and 300 have been injured.

Bedein’s photos show homes destroyed by rockets, weeping children and empty rocket shells lying on Sderot’s streets.

He said bomb shelters are the only protection the people of Sderot have from the rockets. They are found all across the town.

“Right next to the playground you see a bomb shelter,” he said.

The rocket attacks are especially damaging to children, who have difficulty coping with the reality of possible attacks every day.

Children count down from 15 to drown out the noise of the blasts. “When they get to zero, they start singing out loud so they won’t hear the explosion of the rockets,” he said.

Bedein is the director of the Sderot Media Center, an organization that “brings the human story behind the headlines,” of Sderot and the Western Negev region, according to the group’s website.

In 2005, Israel withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip and evacuated 9,000 civilians living there.

This was a unilateral decision meant to give the Palestinian Authority the ability to solidify its control over the Palestinian territories, according to CMU history professor and Middle East expert Laurie Eisenberg.

Competing Palestinian party Hamas overthrew the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in Gaza in June, 2007.

This meant increased rocket attacks for the people of Sderot.

According to Eisenberg, Hamas has said it may be willing to negotiate a long-term cease-fire agreement, but Israel has refused the offer thus far.

“The Israeli government’s public position is that it is uninterested in negotiating with a group that doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist,” Eisenberg said in an e-mail.

Israel instead recognizes the powerless Palestinian Authority as the legitimate government of the Palestinian people.

Bedein said that because of public pressure, Israel may only retaliate when someone is actually killed by a rocket.

Hanadie Yousef, a Palestinian-American and senior chemistry major at CMU, is a member of the Pittsburgh Palestinian Solidarity Committee and the Middle East Peace forum of Pittsburgh.

She said that it is important for people to realize that Israelis are responsible for the killing and wounding of many Palestinian civilians as well.

“In essence, what we are witnessing is a continued cycle of violence with the Israeli army causing much more damage and deaths due to excessive and disproportionate force being used to target Palestinians and a failure to distinguish between innocent civilians and militants,” she said in an e-mail.