Quinn, Councilmembers Experience Rocket Attack
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JERUSALEM (AP) – Visiting New York City Council members got more than a description of how Israelis deal with almost daily rocket attacks from Gaza on Tuesday. They experienced one.
Speaker of the Council Quinn said the delegation of 11 was in the office of Eli Moyal, the mayor of Sderot, an Israeli town of 20,000 just outside Gaza, talking about the security situation. Then the town alarm went off, warning of an incoming rocket.
“The mayor stood up and said, ‘There’s a rocket coming, everybody has to leave,'” she said.
The visitors were hustled to a safe place in the town hall. Afterward, they inspected the place where the rocket exploded, between a house and a clinic in the collective kibbutz village of Nir Am, just outside Sderot.
They arrived as the rocket was being dug out of the ground, just 10 feet from the clinic. The explosion “blew out most of the windows in the clinic,” Ms. Quinn told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
On Friday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg toured Sderot, expressing solidarity with the community and visiting a police station, a youth center and an observation point. He also met with the father of Ayala Abukasis, a 17-year-old girl who was killed two years ago in a rocket attack on the city.
Sderot is a favorite target of Palestinian militant rocket squads. The town is less than a mile from the Gaza-Israel border fence. Since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, Palestinians there have fired hundreds of homemade rockets at Sderot and other Israeli towns and villages near the fence.
The trip to Israel was meant to give the New York council members a better understanding of life in Israel. Ms. Quinn said it went beyond that.
“It’s one thing to read about it in the papers, but it’s another thing to come and visit the country,” she said. “It’s another thing altogether to be in a place that actually the moment you’re there is having a rocket attack occurring.”
The New York delegation arrived Sunday and is scheduled to return home on Thursday. The trip is sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal and other groups.
