“Every day between five and nine in the evening we go into “incoming mode,” said Shlomi Ben-Zaken, a resident of the M-3 neighborhood in Sderot in which most of the Kassam rockets that have been fired on the town in the last few months have fallen.

“My 17-year-old son suffers from terrible anxiety from the rockets,” Ben-Zaken said. “After he hears the fall of the first rocket, instead of entering the mamad [internal bomb shelter] he runs straight to his grandmother’s, who lives in another neighborhood.” In the wake of the deteriorating security situation in the town and in the aftermath of Hamas’s threats to fire rockets in response to the attempted assassination of Mohammed Deif, tension in the town is rising. “After the operation against Mohammed Deif we will certainly get Kassams on Saturday night,” said Meir Buhbut, one of the residents.

Last week fears rose throughout the entire town after one of the rockets fell in the backyard of a private home that is just 100 meters away from the town center. On Wednesday night another rocket was fired, this time it hit the Nissan bandage factory which is in the town’s industrial zone. Four people sustained light injuries.

Sasson Sara, who owns a grocery store in the commercial center, said: “It is inconceivable that they turn Sderot into Kiryat Shmona. Here the situation can be far worse because in Kiryat Shmona at least they have bomb shelters. Here, you can’t even go to the bomb shelters because they are full of snakes.”

This article ran in Maariv on September 30, 2002

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