By Dov Hartuv
KIBBUTZ NAHAL OZ, Israel — If you ask anyone at this time of the year in the Sha’ar Hanegev area what the word Red brings to mind, you will get two answers.
Here our spring is extremely short. It’s really a brief cross over from Winter to Summer. In February March and part of April the fields become green and lush and a visitor can mistakenly think that he is in Ireland. Here in our region which doesn’t have any spectacular scenery, the uncultivated areas are ablaze with colour. A couple of weeks after the first rains the red anemones appear and for a few weeks it is though the fields have been painted red. There is a small “bad land” nature reserve between kibbutz Nahal Oz and Kibbutz Beeri and in the ravines and dales the wild flowers flourish undisturbed from year to year. There isn’t a family that doesn’t take a Shabbat stroll with their children to enjoy the bounty of nature. After the first wave of red other colours make their appearance and various wild flowers bloom in the short Spring.
Of course the “colour Red” has another, more ominous, association for us. That is the alert signal which the loudspeakers posted throughout the region blast out when a Kassam rocket has been launched. This gives the hearer on Nahal Oz not more than 10 seconds to run to the safe room in his home or to find one of the shelters which have been set up all over the kibbutz.
The first Kassam rocket fell here in Nahal Oz at the beginning of 2001 and we were fortunate to be the first settlement to have Safe Rooms built of reinforced concrete added to all our homes. However there is no warning whatsoever if mortars are fired as happened last week. Three blasts rocked our homes when mortars fired from Gaza fell next to our swimming pool. Fortunately it’s winter and so there was no damage and no one was injured.
Another such miraculous escape occurred just over a month ago early on a Friday morning when a mortar fell on the lawn between the kindergardens. As it was just before 7 a. m. when the day care centres open, there were no children in the area. The Kindergarden children planted a tree in the deep hole which the rocket had made. This tree planting “ceremony” has become a tradition here on Nahal Oz and it helps to ease the trauma. No one knows the long term effect these rockets and mortars will have on the lives of our children.
This surrealist way of life has become the norm to us over the last 10 years and everyone goes about his daily life until a “red alert” brings him back to the reality of Sha ar Hanegev and the seemingly endless Palestinian – Israeli conflict.
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Hartuv is a freelance writer based in Nahal Oz, Israel. part of Jewish Federation of San Diego’s sister region of Sha’ar Hanegev. He may be contacted at dov.hartuv@sdjewishworld.com