Uzi Rubin is the winner of the Israel Defense Prize. In the various positions he has held in the defense establishment, he has been required to contend with the grave threats posed by ballistic missiles armed with heavy warheads and with ranges of hundreds of kilometers. He suggests that the IDF and the defense establishment would do well not to take lightly the few homemade rockets, some of which malfunctioned, that the Palestinians have in recent months tried to launch towards various Jewish communities bordering on northern Samaria and the adjacent Gilboa mountain range.
Video: IDF investigating alleged rocket fire from Jenin / Credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
"That is precisely how it began in Gaza", recalls the man who headed the Homa (rampart) Administration, also referred to as the IMDO or Israel Missile Defense Organization (which was responsible for the development of the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system), and currently serves as an expert on the missile threat and defense against it at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS). Rubin's deja-vu is firmly embedded in the striking similarity between what is occurring now in Judea and Samaria and what happened in the Gaza Strip back in 2000-2002.
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"There too 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."
In Gaza, recalls Rubin, they first began to manufacture propellants from a mixture of sugar and chemical fertilizers. The production process was fairly simple and was often carried out in domestic kitchens. They used irrigation pipes, traffic signal poles, or other similar tubular objects for the rocket airframe, which were readily available within the Gaza Strip. The rocket warhead was equipped with standard explosive material from the remains of munitions and mines collected in the field, or from improvised explosives. At the workshops in the Gaza Strip, they used lathes to produce stabilizer fins and nozzles from sheets of tin, and these parts were then welded together and painted.
The initial manufacture was improvised using any basic materials locally available. The rockets were named Qassam after Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, the radical Muslim preacher who led the local struggle against both the colonial mandate forces in the Levant in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the fierce opposition to the nascent Zionist movement at the time. Israel encountered much difficulty in its efforts to contend with the initial Qassam rockets, as they were small, lightweight (up to 5kg), and at the time were more similar to shoulder-fired man-portable rockets, that were readily transported from place to place.
"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 it 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."
In contrast to many of the shooting and ramming attacks in recent years, the domestic manufacture of rockets in Judea and Samaria, mainly in the Jenin and northern Samaria areas, the IDF categorizes as organized and guided terrorism rather than lone-wolf attacks. The two factors that are pushing, encouraging, and funding the attempt to develop a credible rocket threat against Israel, not only from the Gaza Strip but also from Judea and Samaria, are Iran and Hamas. For the moment, they are failing in their mission, but they are far from giving up.
The know-how, according to army experts, comes from the Gaza Strip: somebody is taking the trouble to equip the terrorists in northern Samaria with the right technology, which is adequately simple, and if needs be also to refer them to the relevant websites. According to the IDF, there is an abundance of motivation, perhaps at its highest level ever, and this is also true of their ability to conceal these efforts: Judea and Samaria covers an area that is 16 times larger than the Gaza Strip and it encompasses a broad variety of terrain features, plains and mountains, ravines, caves, and densely-populated areas, and the homemade rockets that the Palestinians are now producing in Judea and Samaria are easily transportable and can be readily smuggled and concealed in a variety of hiding places. Only last week was an attempt to smuggle arms thwarted in the northern Jordan Valley area, the specific details of which are still subject to a gag order.
A declaration of intentions
Hamas and Iran, whom Israel blames for being responsible for the rocket capability that the Palestinians are attempting to establish now in Judea and Samaria too, don't even bother to hide their intentions. Senior Hamas figure, Saleh al-Arouri, who is responsible for the organization's military wing activity in Judea and Samaria, has expressed a hope in the past that "the resistance in Judea & 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. "Just as Gaza is armed", explained Salami, "so too we can arm the West Bank... There is no difference between these two areas of land. Nowadays, it is much easier to obtain weapons than in the past and it is impossible to limit the transfer of technology."
If we are to take Salami seriously, then it is apparently no coincidence that the first public exposure after many years of an attempt to manufacture both rockets and launchers was connected to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an organization that operates under Iranian patronage. This information was exposed by the head of Israel's Security Agency, or Shin Bet, Ronen Bar. Bar disclosed that Tareq Az-Aladin, a senior PIJ operative in Judea and Samaria who was targeted by Israel, tried to establish a network for launching improvised rockets from Judea & Samaria into Israel and that at least one out of 20 cells that Aladin controlled was already in the process of manufacturing rockets and launchers, with a view to firing them on targets in Israel. It is now known that one of the targets was the town of Afula.
In the last three months alone, six Palestinian announcements have been made regarding rocket launches from the Jenin area towards nearby Israeli communities, mainly Ram-On and Shaked. In all these instances, an organization calling itself the "El'Ayash Battalions", which is associated with the Hamas military wing, claimed responsibility. In five of these incidents, rocket remains were found, and these all involved primitive improvised rockets, with a limited capability, and despite this Israel is regarding this chain of rocket launching events as a declaration of intentions.
The first documented incident occurred on May 8, when a rocket was fired from the village of Nazlet Zeid in northern Samaria towards the Jewish community of Shaked, and it exploded at the point where it was launched. On Jerusalem Day this year, the Shin Bet located a rocket in Beit Hanina in northern Jerusalem and arrested a Palestinian terrorist from the village of Ajjul, who was planning to launch it at the Israelis celebrating the Flag Parade. In late June, the El'Ayash Battalions failed in their attempt to launch another rocket from Jenin towards the moshav of Ram-On, and on July 10, the organization claimed that it had launched two rockets from Jenin at Shaked, the Jewish community located in northern Samaria. In this case, two launchers were found along with the remains of rockets that had actually been fired, but which failed to reach their destination. On the following day, an improvised rocket was fired from the village of Faqu'a near kibbutz Ma'ale Gilboa, but it exploded in the air, failing to cause any damage.
This recent spate of rocket launches comes after 15 years of quiet in Judea and Samaria, in relation to rocket fire. Prior to this, the history of rocket fire in Judea and Samaria was divided into two main periods: The initial years following the Six-Day War and the period of the Second Intifada. Then, unlike today, this involved slightly more professional rockets, usually 107 mm rockets, with a range of 8-9 km. Some of them were of Chinese manufacture and some were smuggled here from Jordan.
Touch and go
The first rockets were fired after the Six-Day War. On August 26, 1969, three of them were launched at Jerusalem. One landed near Ganei Yehuda, the second in the Qatamon neighborhood, and the third in an abandoned field. The rockets were launched from Beit Sahour, and following sweeps conducted in the area, a further 16 launchers were found, ready for operation. In December 1970, two rockets launched from the vicinity of the village of Batir hit a house on Hatayyasim Street in Jerusalem. Four women, resident in the building at the time, were miraculously saved, but then in July 1971, the luck ran out. Four rockets fired from Deir Balut in the Ramallah area hit the Beit Rivkah Hospital for the chronically ill in Petach Tiqva, killing three women and a five-year-old girl.
Additional efforts were documented throughout the period of the Second Intifada and thereafter. Then too, Jenin was the focus of the rocket fire. Just prior to Operation "Defensive Shield" the IDF detained a truck near the city carrying rockets wrapped in canvas. In 2005, the Shin Bet succeeded in taking apart eight Hamas and PIJ cells dealing, among others, with the development of rocket-related capabilities. The target, even back then, was Afula, which is clearly visible from Jenin. One year later, in 2006, launchers of two rockets which were fired towards the settlement of Avnei Hafetz, but missed their target, were found in the Tulkarm area. In 2008, a rocket manufacturing workshop was uncovered in the Nablus casbah.
Now, a decade and a half later, intelligence experts assess that the attempted rocket launches we have seen over the last three months or so — will continue.
Major General (res.) Uzi Dayan, the former Deputy Chief of the General Staff, who also served as the Commander of the IDF Central Command and the Head of the National Security Council, also recommends that we should not sneeze at this renewed threat. "These are attacks that can be easily perpetrated. You don't even need a vehicle for them. This is a prime example of 'fire and forget'. The domestic rockets are made of a hollow tube, a rocket motor, and explosives. You simply position them in a hiding place and go to sleep. The timer then does the rest of the work.
"I am not revealing any state secrets here, but this is how it has worked for a number of years already. The capabilities are currently rather poor, but the potential for expansion is quite significant, and as opposed to Gaza — it may be effective against locations such as Netanya or Herzliya, and from much closer ranges.
"It might not be an existential or strategic threat, but with today's mindset in Israel, and the raw nerves we live on, everything is rapidly intensified. As Israelis don't simply make do with security. They also seek a sense of security, and this is something that is extremely vulnerable to the rocket threat. It might easily become very tangible and dangerous too, once the rockets are aimed at large population centers such as Afula or Hadera, and there is no need for any degree of accuracy here, as whatever happens the rockets will fall 'within' the target area. This is what they are aiming for."
How can we present this, what needs to be done to deal with this potential threat?
"Firstly, it is necessary to continue to prevent the smuggling activity. It is relatively easy to smuggle 107 mm Katyusha rockets, the main ones that have been in use here in recent years. Secondly — within Judea and Samaria the IDF really needs to deploy more mobile checkpoints rather than fixed ones that remain in the same location for weeks on end. I am talking about mobile checkpoints that move from place to place once every few hours. This is most effective and works not only against the rocket threat but also against vehicles used by terrorists for shooting attacks. Obviously, there is also a need for intelligence — we just had Operation Home and Garden, and now we need to make 'Home and Garden visits' and to look for workshops and machine shops dealing with rocket production, not only in Area A but also in Areas B & C."
Q: From where do they obtain the know-how to build the rockets?
"From Lebanon, Hezbollah, Hamas, from Gaza, from Iran, from Jordan, and from social media. Almost everything you need to know is out there."
"A paltry threat"
Dayan warns of the possibility that not only Palestinians from Judea and Samaria but also hostile elements from among Israeli Arabs might try their hand at producing rockets. "Israeli Arab elements", Dayan mentions, "have unfortunately been involved or helped or actually carried out other forms of terrorist attacks, and they might also find the use of rockets to be an attractive threat to attain their goals too."
Major General (res.) Gadi Shamni, a former Commander of the IDF Central Command, is also adamant that the rocket threat from Judea and Samaria is not something to be brushed aside. "This is a serious threat", he says, "not in terms of the damage, but the potential disruption of regular life in the homefront.
I was commander of the IDF Gaza Division in 2003-2004. The Qassam rockets were primitive tubes from road signs with a small amount of explosive, but they made a terrible noise, causing major disruption to routine life, and on occasions they did actually hit, causing physical damage. We used to conduct raids and destroy machine shops, but we lacked the permanent control over the territory, so we were not able to genuinely disrupt the terrorists' efforts to build up their weapons capabilities, which has reached the proportions it has today.
"In Judea and Samaria the conditions are now much better," says Shamni, "as the IDF has a permanent presence on the ground. The most problematic area is in northern Samaria. We may have departed from there, but we haven't really left the place. The Disengagement Plan was implemented, but the IDF remained there and now the residents of Homesh are returning there. In 2008, when I was still in the army, the 'Jenin Pilot', was just beginning. We tried to give the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian Police, and its security forces more freedom to maneuver and freedom of action, based on the understanding that there were no longer any Israeli settlements there (these were uprooted as part of the Disengagement Plan – N.S.), but in 2009, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power, the 'Jenin Pilot' slowly died out. The prime minister did not want to do anything to strengthen the Palestinian Authority (PA). This is his familiar policy of exploiting the rivalry between Hamas and the PA; to further entrench the split between Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the PA in the West Bank, in order to weaken Mahmoud Abbas and to maintain the current standstill, which is ostensibly 'good' for Israel.
"The policymakers then imposed a veto on any efforts to bolster the PA's intelligence capabilities, including their equipment in their armored vehicles and their ability to take part in training sessions in Jordan. Many efforts that had been ongoing until that point, together with both the Americans and the Jordanians, in essence were discontinued. This is how the vacuum was formed into which both Hamas and the PIJ were sucked, and now, as a result, the Jenin area is essentially controlled by the radical forces, who are seeking to gradually build a credible rocket threat."
Shamni asks us all to imagine a situation whereby once a month the Palestinian terrorist organizations succeed in firing just a few rockets into Israeli territory, "They might or might not actually hit. Does anybody really believe that the IDF will be able to just sit idly by? This would require the State of Israel to invest vast amounts of resources to contend with a threat that is essentially almost non-existent, a really paltry threat, but at the same time a threat that simply cannot be ignored as the public would be overwhelmed by anxiety."
He believes that in the long term, it is in Israel's interest to ensure that in the Jenin area, and other locations too, the PA has a durable presence, based on firm economic legs and the ability to govern and impose its control over the area. "I am aware of the serious concern over 'Gaza-ization' and agree that the fact that the IDF is doing its utmost to prevent this is a key factor in dramatically slowing down the development of this scenario, but in my opinion, the current situation will not prevail over the course of time. Eventually, this will blow up in our faces. It would be highly advisable to engage in an effort right now, or in the near future, to build independent capabilities of those Palestinians who do have a clear interest in preventing hostile activity and acts of terrorism, not to mention the threat of rocket attacks on Israel."
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