For many Israelis this often means pain and destruction, but for Yedidya Harush and his wife Shira it is an opportunity to treat past wounds through jewellery making.
As a teenager living in Gush Katif, a bloc of 21 Jewish settlements in the southern Gaza Strip, Yedidya witnessed the destruction of his house by a rocket in 2005. But shortly after the house was rebuilt, the family was forced to evacuate it as part of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan that put an end to the Jewish presence in the enclave. It was then that Yedidya's family - together with dozens of others - established Shlomit, a village located some three km away from the Gaza border and that has absorbed hundreds of rockets emanating from Gaza.
It is in Shlomit that with the help of a local security officer, the two collect shrapnel from rockets, remove the rust and the dirt, file the sharp edges, cut the fragments into wearable pieces, plate them in silver or gold and decorate them with semi-precious stones.
The pieces are then sold online, with large chunks of money collected from the sales going towards building bomb shelters in Israel's south, which often suffers from rocket barrages emanating from Gaza.
Making Lemonade out of Lemons
The initiative - called Rocket Necklace - started in 2014, when Yedidya, who worked for the Jewish National Fund, was asked to bring a piece of shrapnel to the organisation's national conference as a present to then governor of California Jerry Brown.
"I quickly realised it would be challenging to take rocket fragments through customs so I decided to turn these war pieces into items of art", he recalled, adding that his wife improved and polished the designs, creating 30 necklaces that Yedidya could take with him to New York.
Although the first products were rusty, they enjoyed phenomenal success. "I sold the 30 pieces I brought for very little money but when I returned home, my inbox was filled with many requests coming from the US, Canada, Israel, Australia and many other places", Yedidya recalled.
In 2014 alone, the couple sold more than 200 pieces made of rockets launched at his village during Israel's operation Protective Edge that aimed at stopping the constant shelling of Israeli towns. But the Harushes didn't want to stop at that, turning jewellery making not only into a business, but also into a therapy.
"This is how my family and I are dealing with stress. We take something ugly and destructive and turn it into something beautiful, positive and building", said Yedidya.
Hamas militants have launched more than 20,000 rockets at Israel's southern communities since 2001. The situation deteriorated after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and the soon-to-follow takeover of Hamas in 2007 when they ousted the enclave's previous government - Fatah - and took full control of the local governmental offices.
Mending the Past
Although Yedidya knows first-hand how dangerous Hamas is, he says past memories haven't destroyed him.
Neither was he taken aback by the efforts of the BDS movement that only recently attained an achievement when the European Court for Justice decided to label products manufactured in Israeli settlements.
"At times I get messages blaming us for using Palestinian weapons - that's used to liberate Palestinians - for selfish purposes but I respond respectfully to those people, saying that the people of Gaza fell hostage to Hamas that cares more about money and power and less about it's own people", said Yedidya, adding that the BDS hasn't had any impact on his sales.
Competition with other players offering similar products doesn't scare him either. "When you spread positivity and do pure good, there is no room for jealousy", he summed up.
