Uzi Rubin, winner of the Israel Defense Prize, who is required as part of his duties in the defense establishment to deal with ballistic threats and missiles carrying heavy warheads, with a range of hundreds of kilometers, suggests that the IDF and the defense establishment not underestimate the few home-made rockets, some of them malfunctioning, that the Palestinians have tried in recent months to fire at the seam communities in northern Samaria and Gilboa.
"That's how it started in Gaza, too," recalls the man who headed the Homa Administration (in which the Arrow missile was developed), now an expert on threat and missile defense at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. Rubin's déjà vu is anchored in similarities between what is happening now in Judea and Samaria and what happened in Gaza in 2002-2000.
"There, too, it began in self-production, in garages and workshops. The Gazans removed explosives from mines, mixed improvised explosives, which initially exploded by launch, and worked with hollow pipes of whatever came to hand. Little by little, they improved capabilities and performance. The first Hamas rocket was fired at the city of Sderot on 16 April 2001."
Rocket launch in northern Samaria
In Gaza, Rubin remembers, he first made a propellant out of a mixture of sugar and chemical fertilizer. The production process was simple, and was often done in home kitchens. Irrigation pipes or traffic light poles and other tubular objects were used for the fuselage, which were abundant within the Gaza Strip. The warhead was equipped with standard explosives from remnants of ammunition and mines collected in the field, or from improvised explosives. In Gaza's workshops, mouths and stabilization wings were carved out of steel cans, and the parts were welded together and painted.
The initial production was improvised, purely from local materials. The rockets were named Qassam rockets, after Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. Israel found it difficult to cope with the first Qassams, because they were small, weighing less (up to 5 kg), and more like man-carried shoulder-fired rockets that could be shaken from place to place.
"Now it is possible that a similar process is taking place in Judea and Samaria," warns Rubin. "At the moment it may seem negligible and marginal and not threatening, but that's how it started there too. You have to be alert, kill it when it's small," he recommends, returning to Gaza: "Look at the extent to which the rocket threat in the south has grown."
In contrast to many of the shooting and vehicular attacks in recent years, the home production of rockets in Judea and Samaria, mainly in Jenin and northern Samaria, is classified as directed terrorism and not as lone wolf terrorism. The two elements pushing, encouraging and financing the attempt to develop a significant rocket threat to Israel not only from Gaza but also from the West Bank are Iran and Hamas. Currently, they are failing in their task, but are far from despairing.
"Be alert." Uzi Rubin, Photo: Yehoshua Yosef
The knowledge, the army says, comes from Gaza: there are those who make sure to equip terrorism in northern Samaria with the right technology, which is quite simple, and, if necessary, also to refer to relevant websites. The motivation, the IDF also notes, is abundant, perhaps the highest ever, and so is the ability to conceal: the Judea and Samaria area is 16 times larger than Gaza and has a plain and a mountain, wadis, caves and densely populated areas, especially since the domestic rockets that the Palestinians are now producing in Judea and Samaria are easy to carry and easy to smuggle and bury in a hiding place. Just early last week, weapons smuggling was thwarted in the northern Jordan Valley, details of which are still forbidden to be published.
Mission statement
Hamas and Iran, at which the Israeli finger is pointed at them as bearing responsibility for the rocket capability that the Palestinians are now trying to produce in Judea and Samaria as well, do not bother to hide their intentions. Senior Hamas figure Salah Arouri, who is in charge of the organization's military-terrorist wing in the West Bank, previously expressed hope that "the resistance in Judea and Samaria will succeed in obtaining rockets." When asked if this was possible, he replied that "rockets were manufactured under siege in the Gaza Strip, and therefore in the West Bank as well, they will be able to overcome all the difficulties and manufacture rockets."
Hossein Salami, commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, also threatened last summer to turn Judea and Samaria into a base for launching rockets at Israel. "Just as Gaza is armed," Salami clarified, "so can the West Bank be armed... There is no difference between these two lands. Today, it's much easier to get weapons than in the past, and you can't restrict the transfer of technology."
If Salami is taken seriously, it is probably no coincidence that the first public exposure after many years of trying to manufacture rockets and launchers is linked to Islamic Jihad, which operates under Iranian sponsorship. The person who revealed the information was Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar. Bar revealed that Tareq Izz al-Din, a senior jihadist in Judea and Samaria who was assassinated by Israel, had tried to establish an infrastructure for firing improvised rockets from Judea and Samaria into Israel, and that at least one squad out of 20 that Aladdin directed was already in the process of manufacturing launchers and rockets, with the aim of firing them at targets in Israel. One of the destinations, known today, was the city of Afula.
In the past three months alone, six Palestinian announcements have been made about rockets being fired from the Jenin area at Israeli communities near Jenin, mainly Ram On and Shaked. In all of them, an organization calling itself the Al-Ayash Brigades, which is affiliated with Hamas' military-terrorist wing, claimed responsibility. One of the announcements mentioned "Israel's crimes at Al-Aqsa," a motive and background factor that has been very common in recent years in many terrorist incidents. Remains of rockets were found in five of the incidents, and all of them involved primitive improvised rockets with limited capabilities, yet Israel regards this chain of launches as a declaration of intent.
The first documented incident occurred on 8 May, when a rocket was fired from the village of Nazlat Zeid in northern Samaria at the community of Shaked, exploding where it was launched. Last Jerusalem Day, the Shin Bet located a rocket in the village of Beit Hanina in north Jerusalem and arrested a Palestinian terrorist from the village of Ajul, who planned to launch it at the revelers at the flag parade. At the end of June, the Al-Ayash Brigades failed in their attempt to launch another rocket from Jenin at Moshav Ram On, and on 10 July, the organization claimed to have fired two rockets from Jenin at the community of Shaked in northern Samaria. In this case, two launchers and remnants of rockets were discovered that had indeed been fired, but did not reach their destination. The next day, an improvised rocket was fired from the village of Faqqu'a near Ma'ale Gilboa, but it exploded in the air and caused no damage.
The string of failed launches comes after about 15 years of quiet in the Judea and Samaria sector regarding rocket fire. Prior to that, the history of the rocket threat from Judea and Samaria focused on two main periods: the first years after the Six-Day War, and the period of the second intifada. Then, unlike today, these were slightly more professional rockets, usually 107mm, with a range of 9-8 kilometers. Some were made in China, some were smuggled out of Jordan.
Dispatch and forget
The first rockets were fired after the Six-Day War. On 26 August 1969, three were launched towards Jerusalem. One landed near Ganei Yehuda, the second in Katamon and the third in an abandoned field. The rockets were fired from Beit Sahour, and searches of the area revealed another 16 launchers ready to be activated. In December 1970, two rockets fired from the village of Battir hit a house on HaTayasim Street in Jerusalem. Four women in the building miraculously survived, but in July 1971 luck ran out. Four rockets fired from Deir Ballut in the Ramallah area hit Beit Rivka Hospital for the Chronically Ill in Petah Tikva, killing three women and a 5-year-old girl.
Additional attempts were documented during and after the second intifada. Even then, the focus was the Jenin area. Shortly before Operation Defensive Shield, near the city, the IDF stopped a truck containing nine rockets wrapped in jute cloth. In 2005, the Shin Bet thwarted eight Hamas and Islamic Jihad infrastructures that developed, among other things, rocket capabilities. The target, even then, was Afula, which is well visible from Jenin. A year later, in 2006, launchers of two rockets were discovered in the Tulkarm area that failed to hit. In 2008, a rocket workshop was uncovered in the Kasbah of Nablus.
Now, after a decade and a half, intelligence sources estimate that the launch attempts we have witnessed in the past three months will continue.
Maj. Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan, former deputy chief of staff, who served as head of the Central Command and head of the National Security Council, also suggests not underestimating the renewed threat. "These are relatively easy attacks to carry out. You don't even need a car. It's 'fire and forget'. The domestic rockets consist of a hollow pipe, a rocket engine and explosives. You put her in a hiding place and go to sleep. The watch is already doing the job.
"I don't reveal secrets here, that's how it's worked for quite a few years. At the moment, the capabilities are meager, but the potential for expansion is significant, and unlike Gaza, it can be effective against places such as Netanya or Herzliya, and at much shorter ranges.
"It's not an existential threat or a strategic threat, but with the nerves exposed in Israel today, everything is empowered. After all, Israelis are not satisfied only with security. They also want a sense of security, and in this - the rocket threat is very harmful. It may also become tangible and dangerous if the rockets are aimed at large population centers such as Afula or Hadera, against which you are exempt from accuracy, since in any case the rocket falls 'inside' the target. That's what they're striving for."
How do we prevent this, how do we deal with this potential threat?
"First, we must continue to prevent smuggling. It is relatively easy to smuggle 107mm Katyushas, the kind used here in years past. Second, within Judea and Samaria we need to disperse many more skipping and irregular checkpoints that sit in one place for weeks on end. I'm talking about skipping checkpoints at the level of hours. It is effective and works not only against the rocket threat, but also against cars from which terrorists shoot Jews. Of course, there is also intelligence information – we had Operation Home and Garden, now we have to make 'house and garden visits' and look for workshops and lathes that manufacture rockets, not only in Area A, but also in Areas B and C."
Where does the knowledge used by the rocket builder come from?
"From Lebanon, Hezbollah, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, Jordan and the networks. Almost everything is there."
"Threat that is a facta"
Dayan warns against the possibility that not only Palestinians from Judea and Samaria but also hostile elements among Israeli Arabs will try their hand at rockets. "Elements among Israeli Arabs," Dayan recalls, "were unfortunately partners or collaborators or perpetrators of other types of attacks, and they may also find the rocket threat attractive to them."
Even Maj. Gen. (res.) Gadi Shemani, former head of the Central Command, does not take lightly the rocket threat from Judea and Samaria. "This is a serious threat," he says, "not in terms of damage, but in the possible disruption of regular life on the home front.
I was commander of the Gaza Division from 2004-2003. The Qassams were primitive pipes of road signs with little explosives, but they made a lot of noise and mess and disrupted lives, and sometimes even harmed. We used to raid, destroy lathes, but we didn't control the area regularly, so we couldn't really disrupt this buildup, which got where it was today.
"In Judea and Samaria, conditions are better now," says Shemani, "because the IDF is present on the ground regularly. The problematic area is northern Samaria. We went out of there, but we didn't get out of there. There was a disengagement, but the IDF remained there and now the Homesh people are returning there. In 2008, when I was still in the army, the Jenin Pilot began. We tried to give the Palestinian Authority and the police and its forces more freedom of action and maneuver, with the understanding that there are no longer Israeli communities there (these were displaced during the disengagement), but in 2009, when Netanyahu returned to power, the Jenin Pilot slowly died out. The prime minister did not want to strengthen the PA. This is his well-known policy of playing on the rivalry between Hamas and the PA; To cement the split between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, in order to weaken Mahmoud Abbas and maintain the stalemate, which is ostensibly "good" for Israel.
"The political echelon then vetoed strengthening the PA's intelligence capabilities, equipping them with armored vehicles, and leaving them for training in Jordan. Many things that had been done until then together with the Americans and Jordanians, in practice, were cut short. This created the vacuum into which Hamas and Jihad were sucked, and those who currently control the Ganjin area are extreme forces that are trying to gradually build the rocket threat as well."
Shamni asks all of us to imagine that once a month the terrorist organizations will succeed in launching a few rockets that cross the border, "maybe they will hit and maybe they won't. Does anyone imagine that the IDF will be able to sit idly by? This will require crazy investments from the State of Israel in the face of a threat that is nothing, against a threat that is a fact, but in the face of a threat that cannot be ignored, because the public is anxious."
He believes that in the long run, we must ensure that in the Jenin area, and elsewhere, there will be a strong Palestinian Authority, with strong economic legs and the ability to rule and impose authority on the ground. "I am aware of the fear of Gaza, and agree that the fact that the IDF does not allow it slows down such a scenario dramatically, but in my assessment the reality as it stands will not hold water for long. In the end it will explode. It would be better for us to build now, or in a while, independent capabilities of Palestinians who have an interest in preventing hostile activity and terror, including a rocket threat to Israel."
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us