Residents return to the Sderot market. Is life back to normal?
Photo: Ido Erez
Southern residents to protest truce: We've been abandoned
Organizers call on Gaza border residents to pitch tents at Jerusalem's Wohl Rose Park and spend the night; plan further acts of protest in the future.
Despite the fact the 72-hour ceasefire both Israel and Hamas committed to has provided them with temporary reprieve from rocket fire, the residents of southern Israel oppose it and are planning to protest it in Jerusalem on Tuesday evening.
A message that has been spreading on WhatsApp called on residents of the Gaza border communities to arrive at the Wohl Rose Park in Jerusalem at 6pm Tuesday to protest the ceasefire.
"The IDF is retreating, the long ceasefire is in place and we were left once again feeling abandoned - no understandings, no agreements, no guarantees to peace and security," the protest's organizers said. "We have to start protesting today!"
"It's time, after three times we've evacuated our homes, for the (rocket) drizzle to stop. Even one Qassam rocket a week is too much," Merav Cohen from Ein HaShlosha told Ynet news on the local radio. "We left home hoping we'd come back to a quiet home, with no drizzle of Qassam rockets, after the tunnels have been cleared and blown up. Soon, all of the troops and battalions deployed to protect us will disappear and we'll remain without security. There's a feeling like the job isn't done."
In a Facebook page opened for the protest, the organizers added: "We haven't seen any achievement - military- or political-wise - against Hamas, and in reality the rocket fire has not stopped for a moment. The tunnel threat we were so afraid of has turned more real than ever."
The protesters went on to say that "in actuality, we're going back to a scarier and more complicated reality than the one we left behind before the operation began."
The Gaza border community residents demanded the government to reach "an immediate military or political solution."
"We want to go back to a reality in which we leave for work and can leave the kids at kindergartens and schools without being afraid a tunnel opens up and they slaughter our children," they went on to say.
In the first stage of the protest, the organizers called on the Gaza border residents to come to Jerusalem, "and whoever wants to bring tents and spend the night, is welcomed. We're not fighting for the cost of living or our home, but for our lives and those of our children."
The organizers said they intend to bus people to Jerusalem in the coming days, and in the future they plan to organize protests at the Knesset or outside the Prime Minister's Residence.
