Friday, February 22, 2008

Protests for Security in the Negev to Continue

Nissan Ratzlav-Katz

Eli Moyal, mayor of the rocket-battered city of Sderot in the Negev, said that the protests and demonstrations demanding security for his city will continue. . Sitting in a large protest tent currently set up in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, Mayor Moyal was joined by at least 12 other mayors and public figures on Thursday afternoon. The Sderot Municipality tent was moved to Tel Aviv earlier in the day after it was removed from outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office in Jerusalem due to inclement
"How are they going to respond when [rockets] start falling on Tel Aviv?"
weather.

Residents of Sderot and other towns in the western Negev have been holding a series of rolling protests over the past two weeks calling for more effective military operations against the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, the source of ongoing rocket attacks in the south. PA terrorists have launched over 400 rockets at Jewish communities since the start of 2008 alone, and over 6,000 since 2001.

Protesters in Tel Aviv said that the situation in the nation's southwestern towns is worse now than the situation was in the north during the Second Lebanon War. They called on the government to answer every PA rocket launch with 10 attacks on Arab targets in Gaza.

"The prime minister must put an end to this tragedy," one protester told Voice of Israel government radio. "Reinforcing homes in Sderot is not the answer. If they do that, what are they going to do when the missiles start falling on Ashkelon [a city of more than 100,000, already within Kassam rocket range from northern Gaza]? How are they going to respond when they start falling on Tel Aviv?"

Mayor Moyal told Arutz-7 Radio on Thursday, "We have not set an end-date for this protest and we are continuing. I feel that we have succeeded in penetrating people's hearts. ...We feel a lot of love and sympathy from the Israeli street in Tel Aviv."

Explaining the protest in both local and national terms, Moyal said, "We want to live in Sderot and that is why we are protesting.... We are fighting so that the city doesn't collapse. ...The war is not over Sderot, but over the Land of Israel." Adding that he hoped the government succeeds in solving the problem "before a tragedy occurs in Sderot," the mayor declared, "We will not lose hope."

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