ISRAEL CLAIMS that Hamas in Gaza is now in possession of rockets that can hit Tel Aviv.
The head of military intelligence, Maj Gen Amos Yadlin, yesterday briefed the Knesset parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee that Hamas had recently successfully test-fired a rocket 60km (37 miles) into the Mediterranean.
The intelligence chief expressed concern that militants have smuggled Iranian-produced Fajr rockets into Gaza via tunnels under the border with Egypt. Such rockets would place the entire Tel Aviv metropolitan area, with a population over three million, in rocket range of Gaza militants.
It was the daily rocket fire into southern Israel that prompted Israel to launch the Gaza war last December. Since the end of the three-week campaign, the number of rocket attacks has decreased significantly, but some 250 projectiles have been fired – mostly by smaller militant organisations.
Most of the rockets fired from Gaza were locally produced Kassams, with a range of only a few kilometers.
The rockets were extremely inaccurate but succeeded in striking terror into Israeli communities close to the Gaza Strip.
During the Gaza war, however, Hamas fired longer-range projectiles, hitting the large southern Israeli cities of Beersheba, Ashkelon and Ashdod, and threatening large areas of southern Israel.
A Hamas capability to hit greater Tel Aviv would create a threat to Israel from the south parallel to that posed by the Lebanese Shia Hizbullah on Israel’s northern border, although Hizbullah’s arsenal is significantly larger.
Hamas called the Israeli intelligence claim a “fabrication” designed to mobilise world opinion ahead of today’s UN General Assembly discussion on the Goldstone report into alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said: “This crisis has pushed the Zionist enemy to create these kinds of fabrications.”
The Hamas military wing refused to confirm or deny the Israeli claims.
Maj Gen Yadlin estimated that Hamas has now replenished its rocket supply to the pre-Gaza war levels of some 3,000 projectiles.
However, he said the organisation is not seeking a new confrontation with Israel at this juncture, focusing instead on consolidating its rule in Gaza.
Hamas fighters seized control of the coastal strip in the summer of 2007, deposing secular Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
The intelligence chief praised Egyptian efforts to stop weapons smuggling but said that Hamas was still boosting its stockpile.