Last month, terrorists in the northern part of the West Bank launched at least two rockets in the direction of central Israel, both of which fell short and caused no injuries. Nadav Shragai discusses this recent development with military experts, beginning with Uzi Rubin, one of the Jewish state’s foremost authorities on missile technology:
“That is precisely how it began in Gaza,” recalls the man who headed the . . . Israel Missile Defense Organization. . . . Rubin’s déjà-vu is firmly embedded in the striking similarity between what is occurring now in Judea and Samaria and what happened in the Gaza Strip between 2000 and 2002. “There too,” [Rubin said], “it began with shoddy homemade production, in garages and workshops. The locals in Gaza removed explosives from mines, mixed together makeshift explosives—which initially blew up on launch, and worked with hollow pipes from whatever materials they could lay their hands on. Gradually, they began to improve their capabilities and performance. The first Hamas rocket was launched at the town of Sderot on April 16, 2001.”
“Now a similar process might well be taking place in Judea and Samaria,” warns Rubin. “Though it might currently appear to be extremely insignificant and not threatening, but that is exactly how it began there too. We need to be extremely alert and to kill [the problem] off at birth,” he recommends, and then refers back to Gaza: “Just look and see to what dimensions the rocket threat in the south has developed.”
A senior Hamas figure, Saleh al-Arouri, who is responsible for the organization’s military activity in Judea and Samaria, has expressed a hope in the past that “the resistance in Judea and Samaria will succeed in obtaining rockets.” And when asked if this is actually possible, he responded that “In the Gaza Strip, rockets were manufactured under blockade, so in the West Bank too, we will be able to overcome all the difficulties and will succeed in producing rockets.”
Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also threatened last summer to turn Judea and Samaria into a base for launching rockets at Israel.
Read more on Israel Hayom: https://www.israelhayom.com/2023/08/07/what-experts-say-how-serious-is-the-rocket-threat-from-samaria/