Sderot Welcomes a Sense of Normalcy

Stand for Israel | March 6, 2024

Israeli children, classroom, first day of school, Sderot, south, Israel's south — Israeli children seen in their classroom on the first day of school since October 7th massacre, in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, March 3, 2024. (Photo: Liron Moldovan/Flash90)

The destruction in their town and the painful memories still linger for the residents of Sderot, but these residents have hope that rebuilding their town and their lives is possible, reports The Times of Israel:

Signs of the ongoing warfare are everywhere in Sderot, ranging from facades scarred by fragments of projectiles to the gaping holes in multiple residential buildings – including in sheltered areas. In the center of town was the footprint of the razed police station, strewn with charred debris, which many see as an open wound in the city’s heart.

There were also signs of residents’ hurried exodus five months earlier. Around the city were dotted ceremonial sukkah huts, used over the Sukkot holiday. Normally they would have been taken down right after Simhat Torah, the day of the attack, but many had left without dismantling them, and had yet to return to the hardscrabble town…

“It feels so great to be back but it feels even greater that they’re all back,” said Tohar Uziel, a 32-year-old mother of eight, referring to her neighbors. She took her youngest, Roni, for a stroll through Sderot’s Canada Park, opposite city hall. In an adjacent building, dozens of soldiers were standing in a semicircle under a fortified concrete shelter around an officer who was handing out orders.

“This is a visibility job, to restore residents’ feeling of safety,” one soldier, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to give interviews, told The Times of Israel.