Israeli border communities fearful of Palestinian protests and threats of fire

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump 's Special Adviser Jared Kushner, and his adviser on Israel, Jason Greenblatt, traveled to the Middle East last week to try to develop an international aid package for Gaza. recursor à la president's "deal of the century" aims at a long-term resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though there are few indications that the Palestinian leadership will accept it.

So while moving to a kibbutz – a traditional collective community – is the culmination of a lifelong ambition for many Israelis, the neighborhood's tensions and fears can make it a trial.

"I've always said, living here is 95 percent heaven and 5 percent hell," said Adele Raemer , Naftalyahu's mother.

Raemer, a native Bronx who settled in Israel four years ago, described a more peaceful time in Nirim. It was before Israel withdrew Jewish settlements from Gaza, which it had since 1967 Arab-Israeli war. A Gazan built her ranch-style home, Raemer said, and she and a fellow student of the Strip tried to collaborate across cultures.

Raemer, who runs a Facebook page about life on the Israelis and Palestinians can not wait to get away from it all …

Smoke from burning fields in the warm air as you fall asleep Nirim residents in the last hours of the war with Gaza. Nearby [1] Sentimentally aided "kindergarten building" (19659002) "It was a question of how to behave in the face of the protesters." The force used by the IDF here on the border of Israel Gazans from walking into Israel, "Raemer said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. "Gazans infiltrating, preventing them from entering Israeli communities like my own."

Conscription is near universal in Israel, and faith in the military is pervasive.

"The IDF are my son, my son-in-law, my husband and me. It's us. I know these people and I trust them, "Raemer said.

Daniel Rahamim, an Israeli irrigation specialist in Nahal Oz, another kibbutz near the Gaza Strip Palestinians. "Like Raemer, though, he also trusts that the military is doing the right thing in the protests in Gaza.

" I can tell you for our army is a moral army. If there are bad soldiers, there are few, "he said. Aside from having a keen interest in keeping kibbutz's fields, Rahamim, 64, is a longtime advocate of a two-state solution and reconciliation.

"When I was young, I put lots of Palestinians," he said.

For now, though, Nahal Oz is trying to cope with fiery kites and exploding balloons – and these just keep coming, burning some 20 percent of its 1,240 acres. A layer of sooty black blanks patches of the kibbutz's fields, which are also ringed with razor-wire fence.

"It is so frustrating because we really work hard to grow a field with wheat," Rahamim said. "The government is not taking the fires seriously."

It's not just that – there's the danger of simply being so close to Gaza, which can be clearly seen from the fields.

"Snipers from the other who can shoot you, "he said. "I have binoculars, I can see Hamas."

Sitting on his front porch on Nahal Oz, he points to the house where the four-and-a-half-year-old was killed during the 2014 war with Gaza

Rahamim admits he's an optimist on the subject of reconciliation, but peace talks between Israel and Palestinian leaders in the West Bank have ground to a halt. Israel and Hamas have fought three conflicts in the last 12 years, and there is a growing sense that another war is inevitable.

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. Some of the time for talks is over, if it ever existed.

"Too late – you had your chance," said Rabbi David Fendel, founder of the Hesder Yeshiva in Sderot, a town northeast of Gaza, as if speaking to Palestinian leadership.