Published in HAARETZ, May 31, 2018
Residents of border communities are skeptical cease-fire will hold and describe the intensity of the latest barrage as ‘worse than the most difficult days’ of 2014 war.
Kibbutz Be’eri is a little further away from the border, which could explain why most of the children there went to school as usual on Wednesday morning. Most, but not all.
Over lunch in the kibbutz dining room, one little boy, sitting at a table between his parents, stood out among the overwhelmingly adult crowd. He had been too scared to get on the bus in the morning, somebody at the kibbutz explained.
“From what I hear, we had a much higher rate of kids attending school today than some of the kibbutzim closer to the border,” said Ayelet Goddard, the education coordinator at Be’eri. “At the same time, we’re well aware that during times like this, we sometimes see signs of regression in the children.”
Vivian Silver, a longtime member of Be’eri, was preparing to head out to the Gaza border when the first sirens sounded on Tuesday morning. Silver is a member of Road to Recovery, an organization of volunteers who help transport patients from Gaza to hospitals in Israel so that they can receive proper medical care. She had been planning to pick up a group of six Palestinians and bring them to a hospital in Jerusalem.
“I had to wait to leave the kibbutz because we had been instructed to stay near safe spaces,” she recounted, “but I eventually got to the border and drove them to Jerusalem. On the way there, I wasn’t too worried because I thought it was a one-time incident, but driving back was a different story. By then, there had been ongoing attacks throughout the day, and it was frightening to be on the road.”
The Canadian-born kibbutznik is a prominent activist in Women Wage Peace, an organization founded several months after the last Gaza war. “With what’s happening now, I think our message is more timely than ever,” she said. “The only way to bring all this violence to an end is by negotiating a peace agreement. This cease-fire may last a few weeks or a few months, but until the two sides sit down and talk, it’s not going to be over.”… read the full article in HAARETZ website
