July 03, 2007
Reporting Live from the Gaza Border
My perspective on Israel and its tenuous situation in the world radically changed today as our helicopter took off from the airport in Herzliya. You could look left and see the Mediterranean and look right and see the West Bank—at that point, the “waist of Israel,” the country is amazingly narrow.
We flew east right to the West Bank border, following the relatively new security fence south towards Jerusalem, which is about an hour’s drive by car away from Tel Aviv. Skimming the mountains at 120 mph, we covered the distance in much less.
Jerusalem's "Old City" and the Temple Mount.
We flew right over Jerusalem, which we’ll get to see on the ground tomorrow, circling the Temple Mount and the white Old City—all of Jerusalem is built out of limestone, which is very prevalent here. Then we picked up the security fence again and headed south.
We landed in Sderot, a city of 23,000 that I knew almost nothing about before arriving. As one of the Ninjas summed up the trip, “Oh, some things we forgot to tell you before you’re in missile range: Number one, you’re in missile range.” Evidently Sderot, the only Israeli town on the border of Gaza, has been under near-constant bombardment from Qassam rockets, a small inaccurate “domestically manufactured” weapon shot over from Gaza. They’re not much different than bottle rockets, except for the presence of explosives and more power. Since 2001, over three thousand have hit Sderot, often five to ten a day most days. On the morning we were there, one landed in town around 6 a.m. They are mostly fired in the mornings and afternoons during commuting hours.
We traveled by bus to the Gaza border and an observation post named Nebbi Meri, after (we learned later) an Israeli colonel killed on that spot by a sniper. We looked down into the Gaza city of Bayt Hanoun, where most of the rockets come from, and watched the IDF patrol the fence.
Me on the border with Gaza.
Then we went into back the city of Sderot, saw a synagogue that had been hit by a Qassam a few weeks ago, and went to the police station where the most recent Qassams are stored. They filled an entire wall of the station parking lot, each rocket dated and many of them painted. The colors represent which faction’s rocket it is: Green and red, the colors of Palestine, means Hamas or Fatah, whereas yellow rockets mean the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
One of yesterday's Qassams (note the date).
An odd sidenote today was that we covered most of the major sights of Ariel Sharon’s career: We saw the plains of Latrun in 1948, where he was wounded in battle; his giant red-roofed ranch Havat Hashikmim in southern Israel where his wife is buried; the Temple Mount, where his visits supposedly touched off the second intifada; the Knesset, where he served for many years; Hadassah Hospital, where he was taken when collapsed in January 2006; and ended the day at Sheba Medical Center, where from the nearby street you can see the room, with the curtains drawn, where he still lies today.
The whole journey was all just too much for me to process. Gaza for me has always been just a headline to me. Standing there today, looking down on the dusty border, the massive observation posts (reinforced after terrorists kidnapped Col. Gilad Shalit during an attack on one post last year), and the area where the BBC’s Alan Johnson has been held for more than a hundred days, really brought home the situation to me.
I ended the afternoon floating in the Mediterranean outside our hotel, which is only some 72 km north of Sderot, but an entirely different world. Tonight we met with the Israeli filmmakers who put out the movie “The Bubble,” about life in Tel Aviv, and I can see how people refer to the city as a bubble. It’s really an oasis in a very tense and difficult situation, but there’s no real way to live here without not worrying. These things are just an aspect of life here.
Some of my photos from the day are below.
UPDATE: Hooray! Johnson has been released!
The security fence along the West Bank from the air.
After landing in Sderot.
IDF on patrol.
The damaged synogogue, hit last month by a Qassam.
The Qassam stockpile at the Sderot police station. Note the colors.
The Tel Aviv waterfront, peaceful and beautiful.
The Tel Aviv sunset tonight over the Mediterranean.
