Former US Middle East envoy Dennis Ross told The Jerusalem Post that the ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza Strip is temporary as long as Hamas still has rockets.
“So long as Hamas can have rockets, then the prospect of changing anything in Gaza will be very limited and any calm is basically a short-term calm,” Ross said, emphasizing that if Hamas has missiles, “they will fire them into Israel.”
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have amassed an increasingly sophisticated and largely homegrown arsenal of rockets that includes ones capable of reaching all of Israel’s major population centers, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and even as far north as Haifa, from the Gaza Strip. Over 20,000 rockets have hit Israeli civilian communities since attacks began in 2001, killing dozens of civilians, wounding thousands, and sending millions into bomb shelters.
The majority of rockets launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad are the shorter-range Soviet Grad or Katyusha rockets which can reach targets in Ashdod and Ashkelon, as well as a number of versions of the Qassam rocket that can reach the Gaza border area.
However, Hamas has hundreds of rockets with a range of 70-80 km, which can reach Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion Airport, and Jerusalem, and Israeli intelligence officials believe that Hamas also has dozens of rockets with a range of 100-160 km., which can reach as far as Haifa. Islamic Jihad may have a very small number of Buraq-100 rockets, which have a range of over 100 km.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
Exactly! Imagine that: at 12:30 a.m. Friday morning, a mere 1.5 hours before the official 2a.m. start of the …ahem…ceasefire, a last-licks barage into the Eshkol region. One made a direct hit to a house, leaving a man injured. No retaliation from tzahal, tsk tsk. I said at the time, if the were ANY rockets left for this attack (and of course there are plenty more), *then Israel has not finished its job!!!*
And aside from that, there’s only one way to get rid of the rockets etc, for a really long time: Bomb Iran.
Cut the snake’s head off already!!!
Well, but now, Biden will shuffle them some Iron dome moolah.
That’s politics.
Good luck in NYC