By Stan Goodenough
Nov 21, 2006
The threat to Israel from the south is increasing, and Israelis are now beginning to talk about the need to retake the Gaza Strip.
Gaza?s Arabs appear to have improved their rocket aim and are scoring damage and casualties in southern Israel on an almost daily basis with their crude but deadly Kassams.
According to Mideast Newsline, Israeli intelligence officials report that the terrorist rocket teams have set up a number of command and control centers from which to coordinate the missile attacks on Jewish targets.
At least three rockets were fired in the first wave of shooting as Sderot residents made their way to work Tuesday morning.
An Israeli factory worker was critically injured when one of the rockets hit a chicken plant near Sderot, injuring him in the head. A second man was lightly injured.
Another rocket scored a direct hit on a house in Sderot itself, damaging the building which was empty at the time.
If the trend established over the past weeks and months holds, more missiles will fall later in the day, and more will fall every day this week.
Whereas the majority of the Kassams have hitherto landed in open fields, terrorizing thousands of Israelis but causing relatively few injuries and damage, recent days have seen a marked upswing in actual hits.
A woman was killed and a man had his legs destroyed in a rocket attack on Sderot last Thursday morning.
That afternoon saw a young Israel man critically injured in a separate strike. Altogether 12 Kassams rained down on southern Israel on that day; four hitting the city of Ashkelon.
Last Sunday evening saw a couple and two of their teenage children wounded in an attack. At least nine rockets hit Sderot Monday morning; one landing in a private yard, a second hitting a gas pipeline, according to Israel National News.
Likud Party leader and former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held his party?s weekly meeting in Sderot Sunday to show solidarity with the battered residents of the town.
Noting that the security situation in the area was deteriorating, Netanyahu slammed the government for not providing security for the town. ?Sderot is not external. It is part of the State of Israel,? he said.
At the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Sunday, Internal Security Minister and former head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Avi Dichter angered Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when he criticized the government for not dealing effectively with the rocket threat, and called for an intensified military campaign in Gaza.
"It's time to tell ourselves the truth: we need to stop the Kassams today, because I don't suggest waiting for a time when the Palestinians have better rockets. As a government, we can do much more," he told Ynetnews.
An angry cabinet member reportedly asked Dichter directly whether Israel should retake the Gaza Strip. He did not reply.
Before Israel began pulling out of the Strip under the Oslo Agreement, no rocket threat existed and terrorism from Gaza was extremely limited.
Since Israel completed its abandonment of the area 16 months ago, tens of tons of weaponry and explosives have been brought into Gaza, and the rocket attacks have intensified.
More than 1300 Kassams have been fired from there this year.