Sderot, Ashkelon, & the Gaza Strip

Monday we spent the day with our tour guide, Ron Perry. After a guided tour of the Herzl Museum he suggested a trip across Israel to the Gaza Strip, Sderot, and Ashkelon. We were game.
The drive from Jerusalem west sent us through beautifully, green, lush hilly countryside--thanks to the Jewish National Fund. Before we realized we had nearly crossed the width of the country we were at Sderot, a small city outside the Gaza Strip and the recipient of Hamas' rocket fire. Although the town looked very peaceful and normal at first glance, every street has one or more bomb shelters, every house has, or is in the process of building a bomb shelter. The rockets are not massive, but if they fall on your home, they destroy it, on you and . . . It is the constant threat of rockets which make Sderot unsafe, frightening for the residents, and unstable. No where else in the world would a citizenry accept enemy fire for 8 years without firing back. Even during this latest conflict, Israel stopped all bombing and attack for 3 hours each day in order to provide food and supplies for the Palestinian people even though Hamas continued to fight.
The smoke stacks in the far right picture are a power plant which supplies electricity to the Gaza Strip and elsewhere. The balloon is one of the surveillance balloons used by Israel to "see" what is happening in the Gaza strip. And the military vehicle is patrolling the fence area between Israel and the Gaza strip. Our guide, Ron, said he tried to arrange for an aerial attack during our visit, so we could get the real sense of Sderot, but it didn't work out--to our great delight.
Gaza strip is approximately 45 miles long, almost all coast line, of a beauty to rival the Greek Costa S'Emerelda. If the Palestinians could get their act together, and stop focusing on killing all Israelis, they could develop into the premier tourist destination for Arabs throughout the globe.
From Sderot we drove north to a beautiful, modern sea side resort city. We had lunch at the marina. From the scenery we could easily have been at Redondo Beach or Malibu. It is no wonder residents of Tel Aviv flock to this resort city every weekend and holiday.
In spite of being under constant threat, Israel is thriving, its people are flourishing, and its land and industry is developing.