War realities touch on all aspects of life
Ashkelon, Israel – With its rows of cubicles and telephones, the underground Home Front Command center looks like any call center. But here, the telephone operators are Israeli soldiers, and the callers are Israelis with questions about how to act during a rocket attack.
Lenny Maman, the officer in charge of the center, says they have received 300,000 calls since the fighting between Israel and Hamas began on July 8. Many call for instructions on how to behave during rocket attacks; others want to know how to receive government compensation for rocket damage. The soldiers here can answer in Hebrew, English, Arabic, and Amharic, as well as French, Spanish and German.
“Sometimes people call very upset and the conversations can be very emotional,” she told a small group of visiting journalists. “We have a behavioral psychologist here to handle these questions.”
There are also representatives from other Israeli offices including the Tax Authority, the Education Ministry, and the Health Ministry. The idea is to provide a “one-stop-shop” for everything having to do with the home front.
This current conflict is the first time that two-thirds of Israel has been the front line. While individual rockets were fired near Tel Aviv in the past, this time dozens of rockets landed in central Israel, with a few as far north as the outskirts of Haifa. Residents of the south have become used to living with daily barrages of rockets that send them into bomb shelters – either a designated room in their homes, or a communal shelter in a public building. If caught outside during a rocket attack, Israelis are told to lie on the ground and cover their heads with their hands.
The Iron Dome anti-missile defense system, which has shot down more than 200 of the rockets fired from Gaza, has enabled some semblance of normal life to continue. As a result of both the Iron Dome and Israelis’ willingness to obey the home front command’s instructions, only three Israeli civilians have been killed since the fighting began, along with 56 soldiers. Palestinian hospital officials say that in Gaza, the death toll has topped 1,300, including many civilians.
Israel first came under missile attack in 1991 from Saddam Hussein. At that time, whenever a missile was fired, the entire country had to go into bomb shelters and put on gas masks out of fear that the missiles could contain chemical warheads. Now, Israel is divided into more than 200 missile alert zones, meaning a siren only sounds where there is a real missile threat.
“If Hamas is firing rockets at Ashkelon, the people of Ashdod, and of course Tel Aviv and Haifa, should be able to go on with their lives,” Reserve Colonel Itai Peleg of the Home Front Command told The Media Line. “We have a very good sensor system directly connected to the siren system that can predict with a high level of accuracy where the missile is going to fall.”
He also said that the army works quickly with municipal services to clean up as quickly as possible after rocket attacks.
“Let’s say a rocket hits the parking lot of your neighborhood,” he said. “If you see all the agencies working together and everything being cleaned up quickly you feel safe. If we leave it there for two or three days, it would become a monument.”
He said that most Israelis, who are not always known for obeying the rules, have been compliant this time, which has saved lives. There have been several cases in which homes, except for the bomb shelter, were completely destroyed.
Israelis have also displayed a high level of social solidarity during the crisis.