Picnics, orchards and missiles part of life on Gaza front line
Even by the standards of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the firing of Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip seems a remarkable exercise in futility. From my viewpoint on an Israeli observation post on the Gazan border, a few days before graphic images of the Gaza beach deaths of eight Palestinians sparked international outrage, the border area appeared a wasteland and the smell of smoke from Israeli artillery shells was in the air.
But in this small territory, the watchtower, barbed wire and single tank of the observation post was only a short distance from orchards and farmland on the Palestinian side, and a children's playground and picnic area on the Israeli side.
That morning, Palestinian militants had fired six Qassam rockets into the nearby Israeli town of Sderot, home of Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz, and wounded one woman; one rocket landed on the bed of a child who had not long got up for school. The rocket firers sometimes hide behind citrus trees in the Palestinian orchards.
We were a few metres from the fortified fence that Israel built on the Gazan border in the 1990s in order to keep potential suicide bombers out. The fence, surrounded by a sandy no-go area on both sides, provided the model for the much larger and more hi-tech separation barrier still being constructed in and around the West Bank.
My companion, retired Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) Colonel Miri Eisin, said with pride: 'No suicide bomber from Gaza has been able to breach the fence since 1994.' But the crude, homemade Qassam rockets can breach it. And the daily fire is leading Israelis to fear that if they withdraw from parts of the West Bank, they'll face more rocket attacks from these areas, barrier or no barrier. This puts the government's plan for a partial West Bank pullout at serious risk.
The Qassams are wildly inaccurate, usually falling in empty fields belonging to the farmers of Israel's Negev area. According to IDF figures quoted by Colonel Eisin, even a number of Israelis have been killed by Qassams since April 2001. The total number of rockets fired over this period is estimated at 3,000.