Gaza militants unveil new rockets, launchers and drones
The use of new weapons mark a step up in the sophistication of Hamas’s arsenal.
Hamas rockets have become more accurate and powerful, reaching well into Israel’s economic and population centers. But Israel’s Iron Dome defense system has so far been able to deflect them.
About 40% of rockets with a 20 km+ range are now made in the Gaza Strip, according to IDF figures.
The armed wings of both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have announced they are now armed with an array of new, longer-range rockets that they have made themselves: a development that makes the militants less dependent on rockets that are smuggled into the Gaza Strip to threaten Israel’s main population centres.
The revelations came as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) launched Operation ‘Protective Edge’ to suppress the escalation in Palestinian rocket attacks in the wake of the kidnappings and killings of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank, and the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian teenager in an apparent revenge attack.
Palestinian militants have used improvised rockets since October 2001, but the improvements to the weapons were only gradual until November 2012, when Hamas launched the first two M75 rockets from the Gaza Strip into Jerusalem during the IDF’s Operation ‘Pillar of Defence’. At the time there was scepticism that Hamas could produce such a long-range rocket. Later, in July 2013, it was confirmed that the 200 mm M75 rocket was being produced in the Gaza Strip. It has a range of 80 km: slightly longer than that of the Iranian-made Fajr-5, which was previously the longest-range rocket known to be in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas’s arsenal, estimated at 10,000 rockets, is only marginally bigger than it was heading into its last conflict with Israel, in November 2012. But its mid-range rockets are much more accurate, and it has acquired long-range missiles that reach beyond Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, putting as many as 5 million of Israel’s 8 million citizens at risk.
These new capabilities were revealed last Tuesday when a rocket landed in the coastal city of Hadera, 116 km from the Gaza Strip, almost twice as far away as Tel Aviv. The IDF identified it as an M-302 Syrian-made rocket. While this is the first indication that these rockets have reached the Gaza Strip, Hamas said it had launched a new R160 rocket that it had produced itself. It said it used another new type of rocket called the J80 to attack Tel Aviv.
The IDF found 40 M-302s on the cargo ship Klos C it intercepted in the Red Sea in March. It said there were several versions with ranges that vary from 90-200 km depending on the size of the warhead.
As Israel launched dozens of air strikes on Gaza, militants from Hamas and other organizations also targeted Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the country’s main international airport, and a number of other cities, setting off rocket sirens across the country. While many were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system, two missiles from Gaza landed within the Jerusalem city limits for the first time.
“They have more [rockets and missiles], but more important, the majority of what they have is from the longer-range side,” says former national security adviser Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror (res.). “They understand where Israel’s weak point is…. Tel Aviv or Jerusalem are much more attractive than Sderot.”
Sderot, where 24,000 Israelis live within a mile of the Gaza border, was for years the front line for Gaza rocket attacks on Israel. But strategically it was insignificant, and Hamas, with help from Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, has moved into a different league. Evidence of Iran arming the region’s anti-Israel militant organizations is nothing new. But the Security Council report comes just as some Western powers, including the US, have suggested they could be open to wider cooperation with Tehran on how to respond to turmoil in Iraq and the recent advances made there by the Islamist extremist group the Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS.
On Monday (July 14), Israel announced that it shot down a drone near Ashdod, an Israeli city 20 miles north of the Gaza Strip, using a Patriot missile.
The Hamas military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, announced that it had built and flown three types of unmanned aircraft against Israel, all variants of the Ababil-1, an Iranian-made drone. It said two of the drones were armed for attacks and one was intended for reconnaissance.
Video footage from Al Aqsa TV, the broadcast arm of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, that it says shows an armed drone in flight:
Hamas’s military wing published a photograph that it says shows one of its drones. The image gives no direct indication of how big the aircraft is, what its capabilities are, where it came from or where or when the photo was taken. According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, the Iranian-made Ababil-1 is nine and a half feet long, with a range of about 150 miles, and is able to carry up to 88 pounds of payload, such as explosives or camera equipment.
Hamas has allegedly been pursuing drones since at least 2012, during the last big outbreak of violence between Palestinian militants and the Israeli government. In October 2012, the Israeli military said it had shot down a drone over the Negev desert in southern Israel, near Gaza, and was hunting for the wreckage. It did not say where the aircraft had come from.
The following month, the military said it had “inflicted severe damage” on Hamas’s drone program with an airstrike.
Clearly, that strike did not prevent someone from developing another drone to launch at Israel. The recent round of fighting between the two longtime adversarial fronts began again in late June following the kidnappings and killings of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank, and the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian teenager in an apparent revenge attack. Palestinian militants began firing rockets into Israel and Israeli forces launched a massive campaign of air strikes on July 8th.
