Israel's New Rocket Defence System: The Screw Turns
Tighter Still On Gaza
15 January 2010By Jonathan Cook
Israel unveiled “Iron Dome” last week, a missile-defence
system that is designed to strike a knock-out blow
against short-range rockets of the variety fired into
Israel by Hamas and Hizbullah. In the short term, Iron
Dome is supposed to herald the demise of the rocket
threat to Israeli communities near Gaza four years
after Hamas won the Palestinian elections.
The period in-between has been marked by a series of
inconclusive moves by both sides: Israel’s crippling
siege of Gaza has yet to break the will of Gazans;
negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit, an
Israeli soldier captured by Hamas more than three
years ago, have gone nowhere; reconciliation talks
between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah
have borne no fruit; and even the savage offensive
against Gaza last year, Operation Cast Lead, achieved
little in strategic gains for Israel.
Now Israel says it has a winning card in its hand.
From May, the first batteries of Iron Dome --
developed at a cost of $200 million -- will be
installed around Gaza, foiling the efforts of militant
factions to continue their struggle against a policy
that denies the enclave’s inhabitants all but the most
essential humanitarian items.
Militant groups in Gaza have done their best to remain
defiant. A spokesman for Islamic Jihad declared last
week to Maan, a Palestinian news agency, that the
rocket defence system “cannot stop the projectiles of
the resistance”, as it launched sustained volleys of
rockets and shells into Israel for the first time
since Cast Lead. Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence
minister, has accused Hamas of turning a blind eye to
this activity.
Certainly, several big question marks hang over the
Israeli project, despite the large claims being made
by Israeli officials.
Analyst Reuven Pedatzur noted today in the Haaretz
newspaper that Israel was peddling “deceptions and
half-truths” over Iron Dome. He pointed out that the
flight time of a few seconds for rockets fired at
Israeli communities close to Gaza, such as Sderot, is
far shorter than the time needed by Iron Dome to
calculate an interception.
Even more significantly, what economic sense does it
make for Israel to try to destroy home-made rockets
when each interceptor missile costs an estimated
$100,000?
Military analysts reckon that, in addition, Israel
will be forced to spend $1 billion on 20 batteries
needed to protect Israeli communities next to Gaza and
more in the north that are currently in the line of
Hizbollah’s fire from Lebanon. That cost will rise
rapidly as Hamas and Hizbollah extend the reach of
their arsenals. Another system, Magic Wand, can
reportedly shoot down medium-range missiles, but each
interception costs close to $1 million. And then there
are additional costs to be factored in when groups in
the West Bank begin launching rockets, too.
Israel’s siege of Gaza could quickly be matched by a
war of attrition by Hamas and Hizbullah against
Israel’s defence budget -- at a time when Israel is
pondering expensive military adventures further afield,
such as in Iran.
Nonetheless, signs of unease have become apparent in
Gaza over the past week. Militant groups have again
risked engaging in serious clashes with Israel. On
Sunday, Israel claimed that more than 20 rockets and
mortar shells had been fired out of Gaza in a few
days, while Palestinian sources said at least eight
Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, had been
killed in Israeli air strikes.
But even if Iron Dome is little more than a new
development in Israel’s programme of psychological
warfare against Gaza, the pressure is most definitely
building on Hamas on several fronts. Israel has
significantly tightened its chokehold on the enclave
over the past year.
One of Israel’s most significant moves has been
forcing Palestinians to abandon productive rural land
in Gaza, much of it situated just inside the fence
that surrounds the Strip.
According to Palestinian officials, Gaza once produced
half of its own food, with one-quarter of its 1.5
million inhabitants dependent on agriculture. Today,
about half of this land is no longer usable. Some of
it was destroyed by the Israeli army during Cast Lead.
Other areas, according to Italian researchers last
week, have been contaminated with a cocktail of toxic
metals from Israeli munitions. And yet more land is
off limits because it falls within a buffer zone of
300 metres Israel has declared inside the perimeter
fence, as a leaflet drop last week by the Israeli air
force reminded Gazans. Farmers say in practice the
zone often extends much deeper into the enclave.
As Gaza’s chief means of subsistence has been steadily
eroded, the lifeline provided by hundreds of smuggling
tunnels from Egypt into Rafah, under the one border
not controlled by Israel, has come under imminent
danger of being severed, too.
Sealing the Rafah border was one of the main goals of
Operation Cast Lead, but Israeli aerial bombardments
only had limited success in destroying the tunnels
there. Instead, Egypt is building a steel wall
underground in an attempt to foil the smugglers.
Although Cairo is taking the flak for the wall’s
construction, and has its own interests in punishing
Hamas, the driving forces behind the scheme are almost
certainly Israel and the United States. US engineers
are reported to be providing the technical expertise
to make the wall as effective as possible.
Another wall, this one to be built by Israel along the
border with Egypt immediately south of Gaza, was
announced this week. Although chiefly intended to stop
the flow of refugees and illegal immigrants reaching
Israel, it is also aimed “to turn the screws on Hamas”
by blocking the only way into Israel for terror
attacks, Yaakov Katz, an analyst with the Jerusalem
Post newspaper, argued yesterday.
The increasing isolation of Gaza -- and the ratcheting
up of pressure -- is designed to send a message to
Gaza: that Hamas has nothing to gain, and everything
to lose, from resisting Israel’s occupation, and that
ordinary Gazans should turn their back on the Islamic
movement.
But there is also a message for Hamas’s rivals in the
West Bank. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president,
and his Fatah supporters are being daily reminded that
their own chances of extracting significant
concessions from Israel -- through a policy of
quietism -- are even more anaemic than Hamas’s.
The hope in Israel is that sooner or later Mr Abbas,
or his successor, will realise there is no choice but
to sign up to whatever territorial crumbs of the West
Bank Israel is prepared to concede as a Palestinian
state.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the
Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to
Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and
“Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human
Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
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