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In the market for a war zone By Tahel Frosh Tags: Sderot, Israel, Tel Aviv My trip to Sderot ended underneath a table beside a reinforced concrete wall. From where I was crouching, I could only see Ilana Suissa's legs - she had decided to remain standing during the siren. A little earlier, Suissa, a Tel Avivian who recently moved to Sderot, was photographed outside her rented basement home. A day before Purim, a heat wave hit Sderot, the sky was blue and people carried mishloah manot (Purim gift baskets) all over town. But the Qassam-free week ended abruptly with the piercing siren that only Suissa was able to decipher as Code Red. Advertisement Suissa, in her 30s, is a tall, dark woman. She arrived in Sderot two months ago. She is full of energy. She grew up in Ashdod, her parents still live there. She chose her new home, modestly furnished, because it is a neighborhood where the rockets don't often fall. She writes and directs plays at a community youth theater and in April a group of youths under her direction will perform the play "Cabaret for an Emergency." A year ago, a play she wrote based on a romance with Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy was presented at Beit Lessin. For five years, she taught theater in Sderot and lived in Tel Aviv. However, in the last few months, she started to feel that her real life was in Sderot. "Here, as far as I am concerned, is where the crazy things happen to me," she says, "shelling, casualties, fears." She stresses that the move to Sderot was personal and not part of any broader social agenda. Nevertheless, her comments do relate to the moral aspects of the choice. "I'm a private person," she says, "who felt that Tel Aviv was closing in on her and the hardship [of Sderot] was calling out to her. The abandoned periphery is calling out for all those who make an effort." She says, however, that her family and friends were slow to understand her decision. She says: "I should have prepared my parents, friends and siblings. They didn't believe it at first and thought I didn't really mean it. But I brushed over that. My parents are people of faith and I rode on the wave that if something happens, then it has to happen." Suissa is one of several people who did something surprising, an act that defies logic, and chose to relocate from the center of the country to Sderot of all places since it became a war zone. Apart from a group of national-religious families who came to the city, others who have moved there include MK Michael Eitan from Jerusalem; Prof. Dror Ze'evi who teaches at Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva; media executive Shmulik Shem Tov and his partner, Haaretz journalist Avirama Golan, and Anat Saragosti of Channel 2. As a whole, people from the center of the country are moving to Sderot without kids, renting an apartment in the city and still holding on to their former home. It seems that they are motivated primarily by personal reasons and a sense of urgency. Iki Elner, for example, moved to Sderot two years ago from Nordau Boulevard in Tel Aviv in order to establish a leadership institute. Elner is 44, the only son of Holocaust survivors from Kiryat Motzkin. He was Yossi Sarid's media adviser, the director general of the association Huka L'Yisrael, that advocates an Israeli constitution, and a member of the Shinui party. In his home, there is a variety of blossoming plants, a dog named Dorit, a pair of birds in a giant cage, a singing canary and a parakeet that doesn't tire of mimicking her. An abstract by Aliza Olmert of Elner hangs on the wall. On the move from Tel Aviv he says: "Personally speaking, for a guy like me, it's a real upheaval, one of the most difficult I could have imagined. I was like a fish in water in Tel Aviv, I knew everyone; I have excellent connections. For years I was also used to the fact that in Tel Aviv everything is set up for bachelors and entertainment. And then I came here, and although there are people here who embraced me warmly, invited me to meals, there is still great loneliness. And there is also a lack of cultural activities, galleries and movie theaters. I don't go to cultural events all the time, but it was accessible." Two years later, he looks at the stir around Sderot residents and wonders why now specifically. "Most of the people here don't live well, but get by financially. And yet, everyone is arranging to send mishloah manot here and food and blankets. Why now?" he asks. He even criticizes the wave of shoppers from the center of the country who descended on Sderot. "When there are Qassams, the city streets are empty and people stay inside, but the next day people come outside again. All of these stories annoy me. On Fridays, I'm overwhelmed; the masses, moms, dads and their kids come here to shop and the Sderoti says to himself 'what, are you crazy, why'd you bring the kids?' The situation in Sderot is tearing our society apart." The Qassams are the crux of life in Sderot at the moment. At the entrance to the city from the direction of Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, there is a large billboard, as is common at city entrances, welcoming arrivals; here the prominent feature on it is a black number indicating the number of missiles that have struck the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. The billboard was put up around six months ago by the Organization for the Security of Sderot, and it welcomes visitors by establishing the way of life in Sderot: first come the Qassams, then comes the city. Suissa says the "fear of Qassams creeps up on you slowly. At first, I wasn't scared." She adds: "The longer you're here, the more distress you feel and the more you feel the despair of Sderot." Elner says, "if there is another deadly barrage of Qassams such as there was a month ago, another 1,000 people will leave and the city will collapse." Perhaps that is why the number of people leaving and coming is being monitored. "The ones leaving Sderot are the 40-plus people, the second generation in the city, who have found other opportunities," says Elner. "The rest are here because they are proud, or they don't have anywhere to go to. Some of them would be happy to leave - you can't blame them, except for those who hold positions in the community." Suissa says most of the people who left were strong: "The ones who kept up culture in the city." According to her, "the people here are tired. If there are strong people who can come and offer support, let them come. There are a lot of high-tech people or artists who work from home and who aren't doing army service. Maybe they should come here [and take over] a shift," she suggests. She adds: "I'd like for the Code Red siren to wail through Tel Aviv, even just once. To make people empathize, panic and worry. So they should feel the need for change." Among those renting an apartment in Sderot is also a doctor couple, who come there every weekend. They don't want to be interviewed, say they aren't interesting in attributing anything heroic to their decision. "It stems from a need of ours," they say, "the main reason is to feel connected and to let the other feel connected. There are all kinds of ways of support and we support by our presence." Like them, Shmulik Marzel, 71, a Petah Tikvah resident who until his retirement was the head of the Tel Aviv municipality's social education department, talks of personal reasons that had him considering the move to Sderot. "When the Qassams started falling there a year ago I felt uncomfortable living a good life here while what's going on there was going on." He ways "psychological reasons" motivated him. "Many years ago, in the 1950s, I was a member of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, which is also being shelled today," he says. "People from Sderot worked for us as hired laborers. I worked in the dairy barn and we would eat breakfast together. I have egalitarian and socialist views, and I felt a need to treat them nicely and as equals; and on the other hand, when we ate together, there was some disgust inside me. It wasn't pleasant for me to sit with them at the same table; perhaps because they wore unclean clothes, perhaps because they spoke less nicely. Inside, I didn't feel okay at all. Since then, I've undergone many changes and perhaps this is now a kind of remedy for that." Marzel is now visiting Sderot and getting ready for the move. He was impressed by the flood of volunteers inundating the city. "I don't want to be like a boy scout who forces an old lady to cross the street with his help so that he can feel good about himself," he says of his intention to live in Sderot. "After all, if it's just a matter of volunteering, there are places that need it no less than Sderot and that are closer." Bookmark to del.icio.us   WHO knows? The WHO says Israel lets Gazans die in 'avoidable tragedies'. Friendly faces Google, Facebook and Yahoo heads will attend a J'lem technology summit.

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