Bombs make ghost towns out of southern Israel

GlobalPost
Updated on

ASHKELON, Israel — Sunday, the first day of the work week, started with a boom in this quiet seaside town. Not a boom, actually, more like: Boom! Boom! Boom! BOOM!

The first three were the heart-stopping but by now familiar and comforting sounds of Israel's anti-missile system, Iron Dome, intercepting rockets launched from Gaza high up in the sky.

The last, more like a small earthquake, was a rocket the system missed, hitting ground in the middle of town. According to Radio of the South, 16-year-old Yariv Levy was critically injured, with several others wounded. A few hours later, another rocket hit ground. Then, another hit a home.

In Gaza, Saturday night was one of the bloodiest in the now six day-long conflict between Hamas, the Islamic governing organization, and Israel.

An Israeli air force strike against the home Gaza police chief Tayseer Al-Batsh left 21 people dead and 35 wounded. The gravely injured Al-Batsh survived and underwent seven hours of surgery. 

Ashkelon, after a relatively quiet weekend, on Sunday turned into the focus of Gazan attacks.

"Nonstop sirens," mused Ido Ozeri, 27, before adding, suddenly, "Oh, man, I think that fell right near here. That wasn't Iron Dome." 

For six months, Ozeri and his three partners worked to turn an old gym into a sparkling new restaurant/bar on Ashkelon's Delilah Beach. Thanks to Israel's economic boom, this pretty Mediterranean seaside town has begun to emerge from decades of sleepiness, and Ozeri was sure his chic tasteful pub, Archie, would be a success.

But that was before. On Friday, Ozeri, an intense 27-year-old, looked around at his sparsely filled bar with the eyes of a worried parent.

"We're down 90 percent I'd say," he said. "Marin, what do you say?" he asked his No. 1 waitress, carrying a tray full of beers. "At least 70 percent down," she replied.

Israel has been under a barrage of hundreds of missiles in the past week, since the beginning of Israel's Operation Protective Edge — an air force operation aimed at disabling Hamas or possibly eradicating it, as suggested by Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Israel has hit more than 1,320 targets in Gaza as part of the offensive.

In past month of tensions leading up to violence, the US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace process has collapsed, a Palestinian unity government formed between Hamas and the governing faction, Fatah, and finally, four teenage boys were kidnapped and murdered.

Ozeri found out Ashkelon was in trouble last Tuesday, when just as happy hour was getting started a plain-clothes police officer burst into Archie and shut the place down. That was the first time Islamic terrorists from Gaza tried to infiltrate Israel from the sea, and an informal state of siege was imposed on southern communities while the manhunt was on.

Ashkelon, Israel's southernmost beach before you get to Gaza, is, like Ashdod a few miles north, now something of a ghost town.

At the Greg's coffee shop in Ashdod, a couple enjoyed what appeared to be a first date. A few TV crews filled up on coffee. 

At the vacant lobby of the Holiday Inn in Ashkelon, Mauro Gandolfi, 51, looked at towards the pool. "This is so weird. Two weeks ago it was so full, you couldn't hear anything. And now there is no one."

It was 93 degrees Farenheit on a bright, sunny Saturday. For some reason, at 3 p.m., Ashkelon remained the only southern Israeli city not echoing with the sounds of sirens. 

But with constant glances at siren apps (red pulsing apps that confirm the siren you hear anyway) everyone was ready for the next mad rush to a shelter.

That discipline is credited with saving the lives of the public at an Ashdod gas station Friday, with CCTV video showing people quickly filing into an underground shelter as sirens wailed, seconds before a tanker burst into flames. 

For the few hours before it was hauled away, the hulking black carcass of the tanker attracted media attention from around the world. A thin but constant stream of locals filled the empty, broad boulevards dotted with date trees out to the sea.

The only person wounded in the attack was Ilan Solomon, a 61-year-old Israeli disabled war veteran, who was unable to move quickly enough. 

The area around Ashdod and Ashkelon still holds the aura of danger. 

Dan and Karen Evans, a couple from Portland, Oregon, hauled a 12-pack of liter-and-a-half bottles of mineral water into their hotel room. 

It is not their first time in Israel, or under missiles. The Evanses lived here between 2009 and 2012, the last time Dan directed a team of architects and engineers building one of Intel's facilities. Now, another one is going up, and they are back.

"My team is meeting up for the first time tonight, right here," Dan said. "We're starting work. It's fine. People here in Ashkelon know how to handle themselves. By now we all know that these things spike and go down quite quickly."

That may or may not be the case. Israeli analysts compete in their attempts to predict when Israel will commence a ground invasion into Gaza.

George Hazout, 53, an Ashkelon cabbie, reported seeing "columns of tanks heading south like I have never seen in my life."

"They're not waiting for anything," he said. "It's gonna happen tomorrow." An Israeli official, overhearing, said "I heard it would be next week."

Ozeri, the bar owner, once served as a combat soldier in Gaza. Late Friday he recalled an "awful incident" in which a commander all but ordered him to shoot at the legs of two young boys playing with a kite. The commander thought the boys were a signal of a planned attack.

"I just saw two kids with a kite, no clear threat," Ozeri said. "But what do I know, maybe it is a signal?"

Ozeri told his commander he missed. "I just couldn't see myself leaving these kids with busted kneecaps for the rest of their lives. ... I shot at the sand, to scare them away. But you never know. That's the ugly part of war."  

Sign up for our daily newsletter

Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.