Early this morning a rocket was launched from Hamas controlled Gaza. It hit a house in the village of Mishmeret north of Tel Aviv. 7 people were injured, 2 infants and a 12 year old were among them. This is “Breaking Newa”, so there may be errors of omission because many details have not yet emerged.
Since the rocket traveled more than 50km north of the Gaza strip (possibly much more if it was actually fired from the southern part) it is likely that it was an Iranian Fajr 2 missile. That weapon is in the hands of Hamas, and also the Islamic Jihad terror group. Once the first reports began to appear Hamas members in Gaza, and many others, began evacuating any site belonging to the Hamas organization in anticipation of an Israeli response. About a week and a half ago 2 rockets were fired by Hamas at the Tel Aviv area. They failed to cause injury or damage. Hamas claimed thy were launched by mistake by some low level people who were doing a maintenance check at the launch site. Israel responded to that attack by bombing about 100 Hamas sites in the Gaza area. Those air strikes were preceded by leaflets and broadcasts warning Gazan residents to stay away for potential, and actual, targets. Israel does this all the time in order to avoid killing or injuring innocent civilians.
I have a little more to say about the subject. Part of this “game” is governed by the international community requiring that responses to such terror attacks must be “proportional”. If response is intended to either punish the attacker or deter future attacks such a requirement is almost certainly counterproductive. I could understand that the punishment should fit the crime, but deterrence has to include a high enough price to cause the attacker to refrain from doing the same act again. The history of Hamas rocket attacks shows that Israeli air attacks have NOT been effective in achieving that objective. Because of the length of the Israeli-Arab conflict there has been a large amount of Israeli research, both civilian and military, in the area of conflict resolution. One subject that often appears is that the population and/or leadership must want to end the conflict. Arab education, even in Egypt, where a peace treaty was signed years ago,, still glorifies terrorism and vilifies Israel (and Jews), Unless there is a change in that arena it would appear that there is little hope for a true end to the struggle.
Wetherhorn 