During Operation Resilient Cliff, jewelry designer Inbal Duvdevani noticed a rocket that fell close to her studio in Nirim and shook her world.
"I took some shards and kept them as a souvenir," she says.
"Since the kibbutz is always within fire range in every round of fighting, the children used to collect fallen pieces and my son also collected and added to the box that was in the closet."
After "Strong Cliff", Cherry went to an exhibition held in the United States to promote business from the south and took the box with her, to show how the people of the south live and what they deal with.
"When I presented the box, someone came over and wanted to take some as a souvenir, and on the way he told me that if I made jewelry out of it, he would be the first to buy it. When I returned to Israel it sat in my head."
Shards from "Eitan Cliff",
It took Cherry another two years until she dared to take the box out of the closet and turn its contents into jewelry.
"After all, in the end it's a weapon that hurt and killed people I know. But after two years I decided I wanted to turn war into love, and I started making jewelry that combines gold and rocket fragments, the same rocket that landed near the studio. After a few tries, I designed jewelry and offered them for sale."
Duvdevani (44) was born and raised every animal in the Gaza Strip, and today she lives in Moshav Sde Nitzan in the Eshkol region.
For 25 years she has been designing jewelry and selling them through her studio in Kibbutz Nirim.
"Living in the Gaza Strip is not easy. Running an independent business there is even more difficult," she shares.
These days, Duvdevani has for the first time opened a sales website with the help and guidance of the Lauder Employment Center that promotes small businesses in the periphery.
"Instead of being afraid of the material that was sent to kill us, I chose to make lemonade from the lemon and make jewelry out of it," she tells Israel Today.
According to her, the reactions in the matter are different: "Some people, when they hear that the piece of jewelry is from shrapnel or rocket, they are reluctant and do not want to even if they initially liked the piece in terms of design.
On the other hand, there are people who say they owe it and also ask me to design more for them. "
"People turned up and ordered gifts such as keychains and necklaces to give to the same people who hosted them around the country. Although this is material that comes to try to kill us, but here I prove that it is possible to come from a stronger place." .
The site was recently launched through the Corona-E-Commerce 360 program aimed at increasing the online sales of small businesses in the periphery and receiving support from the Lauder Employment Center, including assistance in launching a website and relevant professionals.
Inbal Duvdevani, Photo: Diana Sheffer Weinberg
Duvdevani's online store includes a large and new collection with a number of unique jewelry models that she designed from shards of gold, along with gold, silver and gold-filled jewelry.
Tamar Gil, deputy director general of the Lauder Center for Employment, says that "at the beginning of the Corona, we found that among quite a few small businesses in the periphery, there are various difficulties.
We understood the challenges and decided to harness our partners, including the Ministry of Economy and quite a few entrepreneurs from Israel and abroad, and promote an orderly program that will allow small businesses to thrive even during these challenging times. "