Billionaire gives free holidays to Israel's rocket town residents

0 Comments | AFP, November, 2006

JERUSALEM (AFP) — An Israeli-Russian billionaire has invited nearly 2,000 residents of Sderot, the Negev desert town in southern Israel that regularly comes under Palestinian rocket fire, to holiday in the Red Sea resort of Eilat. "I decided to invite nearly 2,000 Sderot residents -- parents and their children -- to spend a week in Eilat as an expression of my solidarity with the community," businessman Arkady Gaydamak told AFP on Thursday.

"The people of Sderot are in permanent danger from Qassam rocket fire, and if I can do something for their security or well-being I will do it. It's normal," he added. A salvo of the home-made rockets fired from the neighbouring Gaza Strip hit the 24,000-strong Sderot on Wednesday, killing one woman and wounding five people, two of them...