Dozens of rockets were launched this past weekend at localities in Israel’s south, sending tens of thousands of residents to protected spaces and shelters. As a result, this population began to organize, via social networks, a civil protest movement.

Seven months have passed since the campaign of incendiary kites began, destroying agricultural tracts in the Israeli communities adjacent to Gaza. Over the past few months, residents of these communities also have been confronted anew with routine of Code Red sirens, warning them against rockets fired from the Strip. However, it seems that only in recent days have the residents of the south internalized the fact that they are in the midst of a war of attrition and that the Netanyahu right-wing government has no plan of action for this war — except, of course, to make public statements.

On Oct. 28, several dozen Gaza-envelope residents made their way to Tel Aviv, where they blocked the Azrieli intersection and tried to make the public understand what their lives have been like. They broadcast Color Red sirens on microphones, lay down on the ground as they would do to protect themselves under real circumstances and brought their children to tell the media about their daily lives in the ongoing nightmare. On the following day they demonstrated at the Kerem Shalom crossing, and on Oct. 30 they blocked the Ashkelon junction. While these protests were covered by the media, it was not done prominently. All this leads us to think that perhaps the residents of the south are paying the price for the government’s lack of a real action plan for Gaza.

For months, the government was expected to craft some kind of plan: an arrangement or war. This was especially true in the last two weeks, after the home of the Tamano family in Beersheba was directly hit by a Grad rocket Oct. 17; it was a miracle that no one was hurt. The government of Israel is doing everything it can to dodge a military operation, yet it has had no success in reaching an arrangement, either. In fact, the government has little to offer besides demonstrations of empathy, belligerent rhetoric and measured, limited attacks from the air. In this reality, the Gaza-adjacent residents have come to understand that they are, in fact, being sacrificed on the altar of governmental indecision. Thus, the residents are preparing to escalate their protests.