I thought I was doing OK.

Life is getting back to normal. My children went to school this morning.
All of a sudden I found myself in a position of asking myself: “So what do I do now?”

We have spent more than three weeks inside house. TV has been on all the time and there has been no good news. We have not listened to music out of fear that we would not hear the rocket alarm if we did. We have spent every night in the basement where the bomb shelter is.
To watch the sufferings of the civilians in Gaza has been heartbreaking.
We feel pain about all the killed and wounded Israeli soldiers and their families.
Words cannot describe the “heaviness” surrounding the fact that Gilad Shalit is still in the hands of Hamas.
We suffer with the Israelis who lost family members and with those who still do not know if they will get their dear ones back from the hospitals. We watch mothers on TV begging us to pray for their children to come back to life.
Many Israelis are traumatized and it will take them months and years to recover.
The towns and villages of the south are still not safe.

We have been informed that Operation Cast Lead is considered to have been successful, but I know for sure that to solve the problems with our neighbors requires much more than this. It’s like pulling weeds out of a garden. If you don’t manage to pull the entire root out the plant will grow again and appear much stronger than it was in the first place.

The future has changed again.

Elin Elkouby