Rockets are again raining down on Israel

By Ted Belman

INN reports Western Negev Under Attack

Sderot and other western Negev towns remain under fire as at least 80 rockets, mortar shells and one missile fired in the past 24 hours from Gaza.

DEBKAfile’s military sources:

17 months after a month-long Hizballah rocket bombardment of northern Israel, the Israeli military and air force are again frustrated in their efforts to staunch the Palestinian cross-border missile assault on southwest Israel. Their operations lead only to intensified bombardment. High casualties do not deter Hamas and its jihadist partners.

For this reason, many of the IDF field officers commanding Gaza operations complain that as long as their sorties are confined to the fringes of the Palestinian bastions in the refugee camps and mortar positions, the Hamas’ missile-launching capabilities will not be seriously affected.

For now, Israeli policy-makers are using the thunder of battle to create an optical illusion of progress towards this objective when, in fact, very little is achieved.

As soon as the troops pull back to the Israeli side, the Palestinians go back to their former forward positions and let loose with rockets, mortars, heavy machine guns and explosive devices, and the missiles, which are fabricated and cached in safety inside the camps. All Israeli troops are allowed at the moment is to keep control of the border fence under constant Palestinian pressure to breach it.

This is the same policy that Israel followed that lead to the continued rocket bombardment during the Lebanon War. In my article No ceasefire is better than a bad ceasefire I wrote during the war I describe the policy.

The prosecution of this war by Olmert’s left leaning government has been a disaster. It has been and is based on the desire to avoid another occupation. There is a belief among the left, undeterred by events, that occupation is the problem. This belief led to the signing of the disastrous Oslo Accords, the retreat from Lebanon in 2000 and the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. And finally it motivates Olmert’s convergence plan.

It is a consequence of this belief that Olmert at first prosecuted an air war only, then allowed for pinpoint incursions only with a withdrawal immediately after, then allowed for a buffer of one kilometer which still was only to consist of a no man’s land without occupation. This has finally given way to multiple incursions without immediate withdrawals, first only to the extent of five kilometers and now to the Litani River but only temporarily because the buffer of choice is still five kilometers in width.