The bomb shelter which became our second home for the past couple of months is now closed.

Sderot feels a bit dreamlike. The nightmare has ended.

And yet, there is still a feeling of uncertainty in the air and it reveals itself in the conversations I have had with local Sderot residents.

Almost every single person I have talked to hear tells me with 100 percent certainty that the rocket fire will start again. When? I ask. "As soon as Hamas is able to build itself up again and stabilize their government and people, we'll be heading back to the shelters" tells me Eliran, a Sderot resident who graduated from Sapir two years ago. "There will still be the occasional Qassam before the ceasefire ends—so that Israelis wont forget Hamas, but for now we will have some quiet."

And what will this ceasefire achieve?

"That's unclear," Eliran replies. "We have no idea what the end goals of the Israeli government are— the operation in Gaza dealt a blow to Hamas, but they are still in power and Gilad Schalit is still in their hands."

A Sderot mother tells me that these lulls in the rocket attacks have been going on for eight years now. "I'm tired of this," she says. "But we well know that the rocket attacks will return."

Indeed, as I look around Sderot, a city of 19,000 residents, even the Israeli flags that were hung throughout the city during the war, sway tiredly now.

That may be the reason why Israeli flags seem to cover every inch of Sderot. Everywhere I go, I see Israeli flags-outside homes, supermarkets, in the city center, and waving on cars. The blue and white colored flags are a sign of hope here for Sderot residents. Normal life, after eight cruel years of rocket terror, might finally become a reality this year.

I only hope that Tzahal's operation in Gaza will let us get back to normal life. This feeling of fear has become almost intolerable and yet I realize that this has been the life of Sderot residents for eight years.

Today I visited a home that was destroyed by a Qassam rocket attack this past Sunday morning (January 4). The houses neighboring this home suffered heavy damage from the rocket explosion. As I step cautiously over the rubble, shattered glass, and the remains of the home, I see the Jewish blessing for the home, "Birkat HaBayit", lying on the floor among the debris. The owner of the home was an elderly lady who is now living with her daughters in another area of Sderot. She miraculously suffered few injuries from the rocket attack but has lost her home.
For her, the war will continue long after its over, as she waits for a new home to be rebuilt.  

Ironically, the Arab construction workers were working on building a new bomb shelter nearby. In any case, there were two groups of us, Israelis and Arabs facing each other, when an unarmed Israeli soldier ran into the shelter and stood between us--right in the middle! 

The situation was so ridiculous that one of my co-workers burst out saying--"now we can all talk about peace!--we're all in here together."

The Arab construction workers looked at us and we looked at them and just burst out laughing. The tension of the day was broken for just a few seconds.  

We ended up talking about the rocket attacks and how frightening the day had been. One of the construction workers proudly told us that the bomb shelters would stand against those Palestinian rockets without any problem. "The rocket is nothing compared to this shelter," he told us in Hebrew.

After we waited for the seconds to be over and the rocket to explode, we said goodbye to our new friends, the Arab construction workers and the quiet Israeli soldier, in a day filled with the terror and absurdities of war. 

Last week a Palestinian rocket slammed into the ground about 50 meters away from our Sderot Media Center office. I can still hear the shriek of the rocket as it zoomed over our office, and the terrible BOOM that followed.

I dreamt about Qassams during the weekend and I woke up several times to the 'Tzeva Adom' (the alarm that sounds when rockets are incoming) even though I was sleeping in Jerusalem. People tell me that I'm experiencing psycholgical trauma - albeit that I live in Sderot only three days a week.

There have been so many close instances with these Palestinan rocket attacks. It's a miracle that so few people have been killed.

In any case, the only form of protection that I have against these rockets, besides the local bomb shelter, is my little book of Tehillim (Psalms) which I remebered to pack with me for another dangerous week at work.