Tel Aviv — Tamara Cohen and other Israelis near the Gaza Strip call it a “haslama,” Hebrew for escalation. 

They are several daylong violent spasms in which the Israeli army and Palestinian rocket launchers trade blows, sending one million running for cover and forcing school cancellation. Eventually, a cease-fire is achieved, and life returns to a sense of near normalcy.

But after four years of this, a month in which southern Israelis were subjected to two separate rocket upsurges from Gaza has residents and politicians fed up.

An exit poll of 1,572 Jews who hold dual American-Israeli citizenship cast their absentee ballots overwhelmingly for Romney — 85 percent to just 14 percent for Obama. The poll, which has a margin of error of 2.5 percent, was conducted Oct. 22-24 and found that the No. 1 issue for voters was Israel and its related issues, such as the status of Jerusalem and Palestinians. Some 61 percent of voters listed it as No. 1.