Early this week Netiv Ha'asara was in the news again--just barely, a
passing mention--when a mortar shell fired from Gaza lightly damaged a
house there. Netiv Ha'asara, a moshav (cooperative farming community)
of 550 people, is the closest Israeli community to Gaza, a scant 100
meters from the northern border of the Strip. It was formerly one of
the Sinai settlements and was reestablished at its current location in
1982 after those were torn down at the behest of Israel's then peace
partner, Egypt.

Netiv Ha'asara also flickered briefly into the news on January 4 when
it was hit by eight mortars from Gaza that caused no injuries or
damage. If any of the Israeli Gaza-belt communities has a substantial
news presence it's the much larger Sderot, the battered town of twenty
thousand to Netiv Ha'asara's south and west.

Netiv Ha'asara, though, is a microcosm of a nightmarish reality and an
almost incomprehensible story of perseverance.

Before Israel's disengagement from Gaza in August and September 2005,
Netiv Ha'asara was subjected to a lower frequency of fire from the
Strip, though on June 19, 2003, at 1:30 a.m., a Qassam rocket hit and
extensively damaged a house there. It was reported that "Residents of
the moshav ran outside, thinking that the missile had struck nearby,
and then saw smoke coming from [the] home, where the missile had
landed near a bedroom."

July 2005, the month before the disengagement, was marked by the Gaza
terrorists with massive barrages, and in one of them Netiv Ha'asara
suffered its only fatality so far. On the evening of July 14 Dana
Gelkowitz, a 22-year-old woman from a nearby kibbutz who was visiting
her boyfriend in Netiv Ha'asara, was killed in a direct hit by a
Qassam as she and the boyfriend, Amir Rogolsky, who took a shrapnel
wound, sat on the porch of his home.

On October 2, 2005, Haaretz reported on "complaints voiced this week
by the residents of Netiv Ha'asara...that they have been 'abandoned' to
Gaza Strip terrorism"--complaints that weren't heard and still haven't
been. On October 26 a Qassam hit the community's soccer field without
causing injuries.

This may already seem like a lot for a community of 550, but it was
still only the beginning. Just a few days later on November 2, Qassams
hitting Netiv Ha'asara knocked out the community's power and injured
five people. Or as Human Rights Watch reported on one of the houses
that were hit:

Eshel Margalit said that the Red Dawn warning [system] sounded at 6:45
p.m., indicating a rocket launching. His daughter was upstairs in the
family study working on the computer. "I yelled to her but she was not
eager to leave the computer, she was 18, you know," Margalit said.
"She came down and we were running to the secure room when the Qassam
hit the house." The rocket penetrated the roof and exploded in the
study. "We went up, opened the door, and saw the room was destroyed.
When my daughter realized what could have happened she burst into
tears and it took a week to get over the trauma," Margalit said. The
strike damaged the roof and walls and destroyed the solar water
heater.

On March 7, 2006, Julie Stahl of CNSnews.com reported from Netiv
Ha'asara that

Rocket attacks on southern Israeli communities have become so regular
since Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip last summer that Glen
Eilon's wife doesn't need to set her alarm clock anymore. The
community's warning sirens wake her up.

Eilon is a hothouse farmer who lives in Moshav Netiv Ha'asara, whose
outer edge forms the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip....

Standing on a sand dune--within easy range of snipers--it is possible to
look over the security wall and see what remains of the former Jewish
community of Nissanit in northern Gaza Strip.

An early warning system sounds an alarm every time radar detects
projectiles launched from the Gaza Strip.... Residents have just 12
seconds from launch to landing to head to the concrete security
bunkers that were attached to many homes in the area several months
ago.

Psychologically speaking, the warning sirens are more frightening than
the rockets themselves, said Eilon, because often, there's not enough
time to take shelter.

Eilon, who has lived in Netiv Ha'asara for more than two decades, said
the only alternative to ducking rockets is for residents to leave the
community--and they refuse to do that....

Signs of siege are easily visible in this farming community. A house
with geraniums growing outside has a hole in the roof from a direct
Qassam hit; the house where a young woman was killed in a mortar
strike last summer--just before the disengagement--is vacant now; and
room-sized concrete bunkers are attached to the backs and sides of
many homes.

A couple of months later, on May 16, it was a Katyusha rocket fired by
Islamic Jihad terrorists in Gaza that hit a chicken coop in Netiv
Ha'asara, killing 30 chickens.

On June 8 it was two more Qassams hitting Netiv Ha'asara, and Human
Rights Watch reported that "after the early-warning siren sounded, two
dogs dashed into a shelter, showing how conditioned they had become to
the rocket attacks."

A little over a year later, on August 25, 2007, the terrorists tried a
different approach. As the Israeli Foreign Ministry's website
describes it:

IDF forces foiled an attempted terrorist attack on the settlement
Netiv Ha'asara, north of the Gaza Strip. Two terrorists dressed in IDF
uniforms and exploiting the early morning fog, managed to climb over
the security fence using a rope ladder. They then shot at a soldier in
a guard post of the Liaison and Coordination Administration near the
Erez Crossing. While advancing towards Netiv Ha'asara, the terrorists
were killed by an IDF force. Light arms, hand grenades and two
explosive devices were found in their possession. Two IDF soldiers
were slightly wounded in the incident.

If the infiltration had succeeded, terrible carnage may have ensued.
Netiv Ha'asara may have at last become famous.

The next attempt came last November 19:

IDF forces and security officers from Netiv Ha'asara foiled on Monday
an attempt by terrorists to infiltrate the community....

At around 11:30 pm, soldiers spotted three Palestinians climbing on
the security fence and opened fire, killing the three would-be
attackers....

IDF officials estimated that the three planned to climb the wall using
a ladder or a different device in order to carry out a terror attack
in Israel. They were carrying weapons, including rifles and grenades....

Earlier on Monday, Israeli communities surrounding the Strip were hit
with a heavy barrage of some 20 mortar shells. No injuries were
reported in the attacks. Also, a Qassam rocket fired by Palestinians
in north Gaza landed in a western Negev kibbutz, but no injuries were
reported in that attack either. ...

On November 22, as the Foreign Ministry website records, "Six mortar
bombs landed in the farming community of Netiv Ha'asara, just north of
the Gaza Strip and rockets and mortar bombs (at least 20 that day)
fell on other Negev communities...."

As already mentioned, 2008 began in Netiv Ha'asara with another mortar
attack on January 4 and another one just this Sunday.

Multiply Netiv Ha'asara's (pop. 550) story by about 40 (Sderot, pop.
20,000) and add many other small, similarly besieged Gaza-belt
communities like Kibbutz Nirim, Kibbutz Nahal Oz, and others (as well
as hits on the city of Ashkelon), and you begin to grasp what Gaza
terrorism has meant for Israelis in the vicinity in recent years.

Apart from tactical strikes that have been increasing lately, among
the reasons given for the lack of an Israeli strategic response is the
relatively low total number of fatalities from the rockets and mortars
so far (about a dozen) and the possibly much higher number of military
fatalities that would be entailed. But, apart from the fact that the
number of civilians injured, traumatized, and living in constant
terror is of course much larger, basic morality (along with other
considerations) dictates that if the house is burning, you send in the
firemen no matter what.

The consolation in this bleak picture is the incredible courage and
Zionist-Jewish spirit shown by the residents of communities like Netiv
Ha'asara.

Postscript: Things happen fast: just this Tuesday, Palestinian sniper
fire killed a 20-year-old Ecuadorian volunteer working in the fields
of Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha near Gaza. Also on Tuesday the IDF carried
out a major raid against terrorists in Gaza City; terrorists reacted
with rockets on Sderot and Ashkelon that wounded several. Would Israel
at last get militarily serious? Hope never dies.
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