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Israeli Town Copes with Return of Daily Rockets

[Christian Science Monitor] Ilene R. Prusher - The very hour Hannah Melul returned to Sderot with her three young boys, whom she'd taken on vacation up north to escape the front lines, the rockets were back. Minutes after they returned home, a Kassam rocket launched from nearby Gaza landed about 50 yards from their apartment building. "Apart from the problem, well, a really big problem," she says, "it's a great place to live." Nearly two months after Israel and Hamas each declared unilateral cease-fires, Hamas and other groups such as Islamic Jihad send several rockets and missiles into Israel on an almost daily basis. A recent study by NATAL, the Israel Trauma Center for Victims of War and Terror, found that 28% of people in Sderot suffered from symptoms associated with PTSD. Overall levels of anxiety and depression were nearly two to three times as high in Sderot, and children are five times as likely to have sleep difficulties. "It affects every moment of your daily life in some way," Melul says. She doesn't see logic in the argument that Hamas is fighting for Israel to open the border crossings. "Why doesn't Egypt open the border? You have your brothers on the other side - let them supply you with what you need," she argues.
2009-03-17 06:00:00
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