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Israeli tensions still high 1 year after Gaza war

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[h=4]Israeli tensions still high 1 year after Gaza war[/h]Israelis living along the border with Gaza say it's only a matter of time before next war.

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Today marks one year since the war between rocket-firing militants in Gaza and Israel began. Yet reconstruction has barely begun. According to the UN, it would take 30 years for Gazans to rebuild the Strip at the current rate. Bloomberg


During Israel's war with Hamas last summer the Israel Defense Forces discovered 34 underground cross-border tunnels. Israel has not destroyed this 1.8-mile tunnel, discovered two years ago, because it wants to show the danger such tunnels pose to Israelis.(Photo: Michele Chabin)


KIBBUTZ NIRIM, Israel — Determined to give their children a real summer vacation after last year's war with Hamas, the administrators of this communal village a mile from the Gaza border organized a July 1 beach day for the kids.
Just before boarding the bus, "we heard a terrible explosion and the children began running and crying," Anat Heffetz, mother of two of the children, recalled the next day. The parents, fearing that yet another mortar or rocket had hit the kibbutz, ran to the bus.
It turned out the explosion occurred about 18 miles away in the Sinai Peninsula, where Egyptian army and Islamic State fighters were fighting. Yet it triggered a traumatic reminder of how close this community is to Islamic militants.
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Israelis mourn next to flower wreaths covering the grave of Shahar Melamed, 43, who was killed the previous day by Palestinian mortar fire in Kibbutz Nirim near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, on August 27, 2014. Melamed and another Israeli civilian were killed and another two were wounded when a mortar round struck the kibbutz close to the Gaza border, shortly before a permanent ceasefire came into force. Their deaths raised to 70 the total number of people killed on the Israeli side since the conflict with Hamas began on July 8, medics said.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Menahem Kahana, AFP/Getty Images)

As residents in rocket range of Gaza mark Wednesday's anniversary of the start of the war with Hamas last summer, they are bracing for the next conflict.
During a tour along Israel's border with Gaza, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Maj. Aryeh Shalicar said the military uses state-of-the-art technology to monitor the militants' activities in the air, at sea, on the ground and below ground.
Last summer, the IDF discovered and destroyed 34 underground cross-border tunnels. Hamas, the U.S.-designated terror group that rules Gaza, spent years building them in order to send terror squads into the farm communities and IDF positions that hug the border, Shalicar said.
Standing 75 feet underground in a dank but sophisticated 1.8-mile-long, Hamas-built tunnel that the IDF discovered two years ago, Shalicar pointed to the tunnel's solid concrete construction and electrical and communications wiring. The army takes visitors on tours of the tunnel to underscore the dangers they pose to Israel's border communities.
The tunnel, located less than a mile from Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, "cost $2 million to $3 million to build," the spokesman said. "This is Hamas' top priority."
Ori Raz, who heads Nirim's emergency response team, said the community's kibbutz members live between hope and fear.
"Since the war not one rocket has hit the kibbutz and there was only one false alarm," he noted. From that perspective, he said, Israel's ground and air offensives in Gaza were a tactical success. During the last hour of the war, a mortar that landed in Nirim killed two kibbutz residents and maimed a third.
Raz said the government already has plans to evacuate the region's children should a new round of hostilities break out, even though every home has a room reinforced against rockets.
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Children play at kindergarten surrounded by decorated concrete blast walls designed to protect from rocket and mortar fire, on June 24, 2015, in the southern Israeli Kibbutz of Nahal Oz, located near the border with the Gaza Strip. Shelters and blast walls have become a part of life for Israelis living near the Gaza Strip, and the war that broke out a year ago this week between Israel and Hamas, which rules the coastal enclave, has only increased such concerns.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Menahem Kahana, AFP/Getty Images)

He said Nirim and other communities had to scramble a year ago to find children temporary homes, and many were forced to remain in the war zone.
Heffetz said the regional council, schools and communities have gone to great lengths to ensure all children and adults have access to psychological counseling.
"After every war the children have trouble falling asleep. They wet their beds, insist on sleeping with their parents. Initially many were afraid to go outside," she said.
Like many Israelis living near the Gaza border, Heffetz is politically left-of-center. She wants the government to pursue a long-term cease-fire with Hamas, even though its leaders call for Israel's destruction.
"If you look at the government's policy over the past five to six years, you see no real attempt to deeply change the reality," Heffetz said. "More security means more soldiers and safe rooms, but not a cease-fire."
Follow Chabin at @michelechabin1
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