SDEROT, Israel — The Cinema South Festival held in Sderot this week, June 3-6, which attracted thousands of visitors, has brought smiles back to the faces of the merchants in the town’s shopping center. For the first time since the fighting ended in the so-called Operation Pillar of Defense, a relaxed atmosphere prevails over this development town. While its counterparts in southern and northern Israel have made progress and even prospered, Sderot has remained stuck in a cycle of poverty and destitution that it seems unable to escape.

No other town in Israel has been so heavily bombarded by missiles, rockets and mortar shells as Sderot. Any flare-up between Israel and Hamas made Sderot a hostage, at the mercy of the intense hostility between the two sides. A recently released study shows that depression and anxiety cases among the residents of Sderot nearly doubled as the rocket fire on the town escalated since the beginning of the 2000s.

In the last decade, specifically since the second intifada, the neighbors from Gaza fired nearly ten thousand rockets on Sderot. These have become integral to the fabric of life in the town, so much so that a museum was set up there to display thousands of burned-out rocket remains. Before being elected president in 2008, young US presidential nominee Barack Obama was taken to Sderot to see for himself, first-hand, the vulnerability of Israel and its southern residents.

The “rocket museum” in Sderot become another landmark on the itinerary of notable guests and tourist groups, almost on par with the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. Now, more than half a year after the last outbreak of hostilities, Sderot is missing the warmth and love once showered on it.