The perspective from Ashkelon: Don't test our patienceEarly Saturday morning a rocket crashed into Silvio and Alba Geenberg's living room, on Har Canaan Steet in Ashkelon, leaving a gaping hole in the roof. The couple, retirees in their 60s, are originally from Argentina.
"We came to Israel when everyone was talking about the dangers from Iraq," Silvio said. "At that time Ashkelon was the safest place in the country. Now a war is starting here and no one knows how it will end. My wife is afraid to return to the apartment. She can hardly speak," he added.
Solino Saban, 58, was woken early Saturday morning by the sound of the rocket. At 5 A.M. he left his wife and children in the reinforced room and went out to look for where it landed. Saban says he believes the new warning system in the city will cause panic. "Some people are frightened and they don't want to be scared all the time. I think it allows us to anticipate the danger - not to be complacent and then run around trying to find shelter." Saban also believes the local population will not meekly accept the rocket attacks: "I don't think anyone should put the residents of Ashkelon to the test for too long," Saban said. Sure enough, by 7:30 P.M. demonstrators had blocked the entrance to the city. They marched from Ashkelon Junction down the highway to the Kfar Silver intersection, burning tires and blocking traffic.
"The government must take into account that Ashkelon's people will not sit quietly like the people in Sderot, even if we have to get our message across with violence," Maxim Atias, one of the organizers of the protest, said. "We will start legally and in an organized fashion, but if that doesn't work, we will raise the bar. In Sderot people are traumatized, a kind of paralysis. We know that you have to act and rally the government in the first days, otherwise we'll be shell-shocked," Atias said.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959835.html