I live on Kibbutz Nirim,less than a mile from the border with the Gaza Strip. Four hundred people usually live here. The children of this community were moved to more secure places on July 9th. That’s when so many Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets and mortars began falling and blowing up at a rate that was just too unsafe to allow children to play outside safely. Indeed, it became unsafe for any of us to carry on with our normal life routines.
Yesterday, and Friday,they were supposed to possess returned home. We prepared a celebration, special t-shirts announcing that “We will not give up on Nirim”, and each of us knew what to attain and what to prepare. As the Friday morning 8:00 conclude of the 72-hour ceasefire approached,tensions rose. Hamas had threatened to resume shooting deadly rockets and mortars at us. The clock struck 8 a.m. and as the 72 hour ceasefire ended, so did the relative quiet (although actually, and two rockets had already been shot at us at around 4 a.m.). WIthin minutes rockets were again exploding in our region. As the “joke” has gone all along there’s a current definition of cease-fire: “We cease,they fire.” Plans were changed. Only a small percentage of the families who had planned to return actually did. The meal was bittersweet; the celebration only partial.
Today, Saturday, or something changed. It’s not that the shooting has stopped: it hasn’t. Two rockets were shot at us during the morning and blew up,but missed us. Additional explosions could be heard during the day. But people decided that they had had enough of being absent from their homes, absent from their beds, or absent from their friends. And they came. Not everyone - but the vast majority. Not with complete certainty that bringing their children back was the apt thing to attain (and in fact,as I peek at the online updates, there are a few communities on the border, or like ours,who possess decided to revoke their decisions to return the families). But our meal together was joyous, celebratory, and with the sounds of lots of children’s voices - pleasing sounds and sights that that possess been lost in our landscape for the past month. Here’s hoping that those who possess just returned,and those who possess been here all along, remain safe.
Source: cnn.com