Middle East Features

Israeli coastal resort becomes latest frontline city

Mar 13, 2008, 12:46 GMT

Askelon, Israel - Ilan and Simona Biton were walking with their three young children along the seaside promenade that Saturday afternoon, when they heard a loud sonic boom, followed by the sharp whistle of a missile penetrating the atmosphere. 'We looked up at the sky,' says Ilan, 36. Then the missile, fired from the Gaza Strip, struck, some 10 metres away. 'I felt that something hurt me. I didn't feel the pain. I ran to see what happened to my kids and wife,' Ilan recounts from his hospital ward. A piece of shrapnel from the rocket had pierced his lower abdomen and doctors had to remove half his intestine, he says as he takes a bite of his first solid meal in five days. Simona, 35, recalls how she shoved her 2-year-old into a hole in a rock on the promenade, afraid a second missile might follow. 'You can't live like this. I hope the army will do something,' she says. 'We don't want to be like Sderot.' The family lives in Ashkelon, a city in southern Israel of more than 120,000 inhabitants, which was struck by 15 Grad missiles within five days early this and late last month. Unlike Sderot, the Israeli town located some two kilometres north-east of Gaza that has been hardest hit, Ashkelon, on the coast at some 10 kilometres from the Strip's northern border, had until recently been largely out of range of the rockets fired from Gaza on an almost daily basis. For Israel, the placing of Ashkelon on the firing line is the realization of a scenario it has long feared, one which forecast Palestinian militants would gradually upgrade their rockets, skills and know-how to strike deeper into Israel, putting a growing portion of its population at risk. Under a worst-case scenario, the rockets will eventually reach beyond Ashkelon, or could be exported to the West Bank, threatening Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, even Ben-Gurion International Airport. Israel says it cannot allow this to happen, but as it tries to curb the attacks, it finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, are the calls for harsh action by the hundreds of thousands of its citizens who have entered the radius of fire, and on the other, the international pressure not to increase the suffering of the 1.4 million Palestinians living in the impoverished Gaza Strip. Israel has tried nearly everything to stop the rockets - airstrikes, targeted assassinations, ground incursions, economic sanctions, even fuel and symbolic electricity cuts. None of these have helped much. And the airstrikes and heavy ground fighting in densely-populated Gaza have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, some half of them civilians, since January 2006, according to figures from the Israeli B'Tselem human rights group. Israel regards the rockets at Ashkelon as a serious escalation. Not only the city's residents, but a total of 250,000 Israelis are drawn into their extended radius, explains Alan Marcus, the head of strategic planning at Ashkelon's city council. Rockets first hit an industrial zone on Ashkelon's southern outskirts in 2006, but these were mostly Palestinian-made Qassam, al-Quds and Nasser rockets, to which extra fuel had to be added for them to reach further - at the expense of explosives. Qassam rockets, which can reach up to 12 kilometres, normally have some four kilograms of explosives, mainly sulphur from fertilizer and salt. Their fuel is a mixture of saltpetre (a component of gunpowder), chlorates - and even sugar. 'These are homemade flying bombs,' explains Marcus. By contrast, all the rockets that landed in Ashkelon this year are Russian-made Grad-type Katyushas, which have 17 kilogrammes of military-issued explosives and whose impact is much more devastating. With a range of 22 kilometres, they hit all over the city, home also to the world's largest desalination plant, which supplies about one-fifth of Israel's water needs, a 2,200 Megawatt power station which also supplies the Gaza Strip, and an oil pipeline terminal with vulnerable large containers storing fuel and cooking gas. The Russian roulette of random rocket fire takes a mental toll on residents, who never know when and where they will be caught. Ron Lobel, the deputy director of Ashkelon's Barzilai hospital, says that in addition to the 11 Israelis killed by rockets from Gaza over the past years and dozens injured from shrapnel, more than 1,500 have been treated for shock. The symptoms - shouting, screaming, apathy, disorientation, breathing problems, chest pains - subside after several hours or days in most cases. But about 20 per cent of these, says Lobel, developed chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. 'The major impact is the fear that it creates, the disruption of life. Should I send my children out to play, to school, to buy chewing gum? To have to move six or seven times at night from the bedroom to the safe room - this creates a certain stress. 'Everyone breaks at a certain point, and each one has their own breaking point,' says Lobel, whose hospital has treated all victims from the rocket attacks in the entire region since they first began, and which also treats 10-20 Palestinians from Gaza on any given day. The situation was once different. Before the current Palestinian uprising erupted in late 2000, Marcus reminisces, Ashkelon and Gaza City were twin cities. Officials from both sides visited each other regularly and planned ambitious joint programmes, including a railway link from Ashkelon down to southern Gaza and beyond. 'But,' he sighs, 'it turned out to be a dream, what I call a bubble, and sanity left the Middle East.'

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JBrownMar 14th, 2008 - 00:40:14

What the article failed to address is that Israel built numerous settlements on Palestinian land in blatant defiance of numerous UN resolutions. Israel afflicts daily trial by missiles on these unfortunate men women and children; victims of the IOF targeted killings. Sophisticated weaponry inflicted on unsophisticated people to steal their land.
The Israeli in their arrogance have managed to thumb their noses at the civilized World because the US condones their thuggery and murder of the Palestinians and vetoes each and every resolution against the Jewish holocaust/genocide of the Palestinian people. The disparity that existed between Israelis sophisticated weaponry and Palestinian stone throwers was bound to change; now the stone throwers have graduated to missile launchers. Bully for them even the mouse must roar.

The Muslims are now even more determined to remove this scourge that is Israel from their midst. We must suffer the consequence of the Israeli invasion/occupation of Palestine because we in the West have failed to halt Israeli’s aggression against them.
The Muslim pincer movement i.e. the Arabs with their sly diplomacy not unlike the 1972 oil crisis is in a win win situation, OPEC oil is no longer $20 but $110. President Carter saw the writing on the wall but he was treated like 'Chicken little'. The Iranians, the genie released from the bottle with Bush’s illegal Iraq invasion is on the other hand busy training and supplying the Palestinians Hamas/Hezbollah.

We must cut the jewish umbilical cord or we will go down the gurgler with them.

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someone should give 500lbs bombs to PalestiniansMar 14th, 2008 - 02:22:25

Then they can destroy the zionists better with less loss of life. If the zionists do not attack them, just give them basic human rights and not divide the area into 5 square mile territories, the Palestinians will accept them as brothers in creation.

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PorkyMar 14th, 2008 - 10:21:08

The World has many borders and people live quite peacefully alongside each other. The Gaza strip should be no different, many small states live very succesfully. The only difference with Gaza is that it's inhabitants have been polluted by Islam. If they were Bhuddists Christians or Atheists there would be no problem. Islam only brings sorrow, grief, intolerance and murder.
Consider the amount of people displaced after WW11, the Palastinians had only a fraction of the amount of people displaced by that conflict and Europe has got on with the job and is now very peacefull and prosperous. No doubt if Islam was a factor border fighting and hatred and poverty would be ongoing and Europe would still be at war.

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The Muslims don't care about human lifeMar 14th, 2008 - 13:09:15

Forget about all this occupation crap! It's a smoke screen! A sham! A reason to blow stuff up! Simple fact is the land was never the Palestinians. It was all British controlled and before that was the Ottoman empire. There was never a Palestine! It became a Palestine right after someone else took the land and made something into it. How convenient! Fact is, the Arabs are racist. They hate blacks, as you can see in Darfur. They hate Indians as we can see in Kashmir. They hate the Jews and Christians. They fight with every known race and religion on Earth. They killed nuns after the Pope somehow insulted their stupid religion. Which he didn't. Now the people in Iran are voting for only 1 one leader (and we know who that is) because the Ayatollah threatened the opposing party. They kill each other in Iraq everyday. Sunnis kill Shias and vice versa. The Lebanese army killed thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon because they couldn't behave. Al-qaeda behead people everyday for not following in their sick religious ways. Just a few days ago, 100 people were killed by multiple suicide bombs in Pakistan.

BUT OF COURSE.... SOMEWAY.... SOMEHOW.... THIS IS ISRAEL'S FAULT RIGHT??

But of course, it's always Israel's fault, isn't it? Somehow Israel forces these people to act like animals. In fact, the land is so important to the Palestinians that they send their 8 year old kids to blow themselves up and dance in the streets when they do. Don't be fooled by these sick Palestinian people. They are not oppressed as they make themselves appear to be. It's all a show. Simple and sad fact is that they are brain washed idiots who send their own people to strap on bombs and blow up shopping malls simply because they are jealous of there next door neighbor who makes their people look stupid.

Maybe if the Palestinians could someone how muster the strength to blame themselves for their own problems, they could perhaps lead a better life for their people. But of course, it's simply much easier to blame someone else. That's the Muslim way.

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The land was never the jewsMar 15th, 2008 - 00:05:20

The UN and the civilized world set out to prevent another WW11 yet the fact of the matter is that numerous UN resolutions to resolve this contentious issue has been ignored only because the US vetoes each and every resolutions.
The Israelis and the IOF operates like outlaws/banditos, a law unto themselves not unlike the US and its illegal invasion of Iraq. Every bully appreciates that there's is a day or reckoning when even the little guy can lands a lucky punch. The Muslims mate are no weaklings! Quagmire Iraq and Afghanistan has shown that.

We can't demand that the Muslims conform if the jews and the US consistently breaks all the rules,ignores the verdict of the civilized world and rains down untold suffering on innocent people. Both the US and Israelis have lost the PR war and like Sampson can only bring the whole edifice crashing down on our heads.

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Mosche Dayan (1915-1981Mar 15th, 2008 - 00:16:46

'There is no more Palestine. It's Finished'.

' Each and every Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist'.

'We are a generation of occupiers/settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house'

'Israel cannot afford to stand against the entire world and be denounced as the aggressor'.

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