Letters from the Gaza War - 2008-2009
	January 11, 2009 – day 16
	Hi all, I guess we had a relatively quiet Shabbat. Jay’s birthday brunch went as planned –no sirens although there was one just after the “humanitarian ceasefire” hours at 4:15. Friday morning Eitan was out working in the fields when there was one missile just outside of Ashdod and one just outside of Ashkelon. They were working pretty much midpoint between these cities but didn’t see anything. Today school is starting up at schools where the kids can be in bomb shelters. Aside form the actual war it seems like the topic of what to do with all the kids and how to run school is the most important issue-I never saw school as so important but it gives a framework and normalcy to life and parents have a hard time working when their younger kids are unsupervised. Eitan and all the 11, 12 graders are first as they have matriculations this year and they don’t want them to fall too far behind. Hela’s school may start up tomorrow but also perhaps different grades each day so they will be in bomb shelters as there aren’t any near the classrooms which are open concept with lots of buildings scattered around. The real problem is the ride to school as she is ½ hr. drive all of it in firing range and on open highway with nowhere to hide. All told at least one missile fell near the 1-5 graders school. One fell near Hela’s school and 2 fell near the boys’ high school. Luck is still with us as there have been few casualties despite several direct hits. I am off soon to the same place I was supposed to be last week but-without any important people attending. I was supposed to be at a different school but they didn’t get security clearance to open. Several missiles have fallen on the route between us and Ashdod so it is a bit scary but we have driven it quite a few times since all this has started. Israel bombed Gaza again almost all night and seeing as we live on the runway I was up most of the night from the noise. There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. It is also not clear what this war has proved if they are still managing to launch 20-40 missiles a day. The theory is that they didn’t renew the 6 month ceasefire because they intended to use their new long range rockets anyways and so it is not because we attacked them that they are targeting all the farther out cities. On the one hand the more hate we breed and the more children we traumatize the less chance we have of ever getting peace. On the other hand when we don’t fire back they think we are afraid and keep up their rocket fire (up to 500 a month for 8 years now) in the hopes of us giving back ALL of Israel. I don’t think that in 1948 anyone dreamed that it would get so complicated and that a logical solution would get farther and farther away. After all we have peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt and a quiet border with Syria. It is the terrorist regimes that have sprung up in the last few decades that we can’t deal with-and neither can other western countries! But they have the luxury of living a little further away. I hope that at some point Hamas will consider what is happening and that peace talks of some sort will calm things down again. I can’t imagine getting back to “normal” when there are still missiles falling every day. Bye Tzippi
		to day 19