VIDEO - Sderot residents were surprised Tuesday morning by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s visit to the rocket-stricken town. During the visit, a Qassam rocket landed near the town's industrial zone. There were no injuries or damage in the incident.
From Sderot Olmert continued to a conference in Be'er Sheva, in which he addressed the kidnapped soldier issue: "This is a long war, which requires a lot of patience and necessitates infinite restraint more than once. You have to know how to control yourself, you have to know how to answer back."
The prime minister promised: "We will win and we will return Galid Shalit to his parents, to his family, to his loved ones, to us."
Alon Davidi, head of Sderot’s protest committee, said, “Unfortunately, the prime minister came only after the soldier was kidnapped. We wrote him dozens of letters and tried to talk to him on the phone with no success. Suddenly he arrives without warning and without inviting us.”
Olmert, who was severely criticized for not visiting Sderot once or even speaking to residents on the phone since his election, paid a surprise visit to Sderot Tuesday along with Defense Minister Amir Peretz during a tour of the south by the two leaders. None of the town’s representatives was informed of their arrival, and Mayor Eli Moyal was told only Tuesday morning, which didn’t contribute a positive tone to the meeting.
“This morning I got a phone call from the director general of the Prime Minister’s Office, who told that Ehud Olmert would meet with us,” Moyal said. “We met with regional council heads from the area. He came together with the defense minister, and the meeting was correct and to the point. We explained the situation, and we told him we expect Gilad Shalit to be returned home safely and that they must continue to fight Qassam fire at Sderot. The prime minister told us that one of the aims of the army operation was to reduce Qassam attacks to a minimum, and the defense minister said the plan was in place even before Shalit’s capture.”
Olmert and Peretz in Sderot (Photo: Moshe Milner, GPO)
Regional council heads in the western Negev presented their demands for protection to Olmert and Peretz. Mayor Moyal told Olmert that he expected the government to act with determination to ensure the safety of Sderot residents, and that more needed to be done to stop residents from continuing to move away from the town. “The prime minister heard us. Not much was said that we haven’t heard in the past,” Moyal said at the end of the meeting. “But I think the most importance of the meeting is the fact that it happened.”
News of the prime minister’s visit in Sderot reached residents of the town quickly, and the expressed anger that it took him so long to arrive. In the past weeks, residents who had declared a hunger strike demanding the government act to stop Qassam fire and asked to speak with Olmert, but with no success. “We would have expected the prime minister and his associates to invite us and talk to us,” Davidi said. “If we had known of the visit earlier, we would have gotten ready and tried to meet with him in any way possible.”
Ronny Sofer and Anat Bershkovsky contributed to the report
First published: 12:41, 07.04.6