A Gaza rocket strikes Sderot. Photo: Shirit Milikovski, Sderot Media Center.

“We have patience,” Sderot Mayor Alon Davidi said Thursday, of the IDF’s campaign to end rocket attacks against his struggling town, speaking with Israel’s NRG News. Davidi said that the IDF’s recent elimination of senior Hamas commanders brought him hope that the start of the school year in his city will be held as usual.

Despite some 14-years of Qassam and mortar shelling, he “hopes that we can get back to normal real soon,” as battle-scarred residents prepare for the opening of the school year in just under two weeks.

“The public’s resilience, and yours, gives us considerable strength to use considerable strength,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told teenage representatives of Sderot youth groups on Monday in a meeting offering support to the southern city’s residents, who are under near-constant threat from rockets.

“We are in the midst of a diplomatic campaign and in a diplomatic campaign… one needs much strength, patience, persistence and wisdom as well,” Netanyahu said, according to Israel Hayom.

The country’s southern residents, particularly those within about 40 kilometers of the Gaza Strip, still do not know whether doors at educational institutions will open, due to Home Front Command safety instructions strictly limiting gatherings and events.

“My daughter asks every day, if we’re buying textbooks, if she’s going back to school soon,” he shared.

“I tell her – and all the children and parents in the city – we are preparing to open the year as planned, but will do so in accordance with the Home Front Command,” he said.

“Hamas failed, both in hostilities, and in negotiations, and so it tries to scare us in a psychological war. New families who come to settle in the city prove that it is failing,” Davidi boasted.

“Headlines that are appearing in the media the last few days make us hopeful that we can get back to normal soon, and that it will be a ‘real normalcy,’ and not an ‘ongoing emergency normalcy,’ like we’ve had over the years,” Davidi said, hopefully.

“We’re not holding a stopwatch and waiting for the end of the operation or the end of the negotiations,” he stressed, and added that “we have the resilience and patience that Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] asked for [in a press conference Wednesday night], but the question is – to what end? Even if the operation will continue for another month, we’ll wait because we need to subdue Hamas and Gaza terror once and for all.”

“I trust that the prime minister is driven by considerations of the best interests of the State of Israel only,” he said.

Watch raw video from Russia’s RT network of a direct hit by a rocket on a factory in Sderot on June 29th, during Operation Protective Edge: