Clandestine arms makers like Abu Abdullah have made life in Israel more stressful than ever in recent months. His PFLP is merely one of a dozen or so armed groups that are operating in Gaza. Most, if not all, have rockets. According to the Israeli government, an estimated 640 rocket attacks have been launched from Gaza since July, with about 530 landing inside Israel. The months of bombardment have been the heaviest since militants in Gaza began learning to build and use rockets four years ago. Emboldened by Hizbullah’s apparent success in this past summer’s Lebanon war, the Gaza militants say they’ve also made big improvements in their own homemade weapons, packing in more explosives and sending them farther by adding a second engine; some groups have even begun upgrading to military-grade explosives, smuggled in from Egypt. And years of experience have sharpened their aim until they can count on striking within a quarter mile of a chosen target. The Israeli government’s efforts to stop them have mostly failed.
Each faction that builds rockets has its own design, with its own name. Some models, known generically as Qassams, have a range of 10 miles or more. The version Abu Abdullah showed me is known as the Moqawama 2 (Arabic for “resistance”). It weighs about nine pounds, is six feet long and has a range of a mile or two. The body, a length of pipe, was bought at a local market and taken to a secret location to be machined. “Not even our own members know where,” he says. The pipe was cut into three sections. The first was split to make four fins for the rocket’s tail. The second piece, in the middle, is for the engine. The third section has been shaped into a nose cone, with a three-inch hole in the end for adding the explosive. Spoon by spoon, Abu Abdullah lifts it from a plate decorated with an Arabic design in blue and gold. Soon, he says, he will finish “the best rocket I’ve made so far,” the Moqawama 3, twice the length and with a range of 10 miles.
He’s eager to watch it fly, but there’s no saying when that might happen. A ceasefire went into effect last Sunday. The next day, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered a military pullout from Gaza and offered a prisoner exchange and new territorial concessions if the violence stops. In return, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dispatched 16,000 security forces to the border, mainly to prevent rocket attacks. The truce was violated almost immediately. By Tuesday roughly a dozen rockets had been launched from Gaza, and Israeli soldiers in Jenin killed two Palestinians—a militant and a woman who was nearby. The two sides can’t even agree on what areas the truce should cover; the Israelis say Gaza only, not the West Bank, while Hamas and other factions say unless the West Bank is included, it’s null and void. “The ceasefire is a very fragile one,” said Miri Eisen, a spokesperson for Olmert’s office. “We’re not going to accept one or two rockets a day,” she told NEWSWEEK on Wednesday. “We’ve accepted it over the past two days to give the ceasefire a chance, but we will defend ourselves.”
Still, everyone has reasons to want the halt in fighting to continue. It’s a chance to jump-start peace negotiations, a chance for Olmert to revive his sagging political fortunes, a chance for Hamas and other militants to regroup and rearm. More than anything, many Israelis just want the rockets to stop falling around their homes and playgrounds. They have brought tremendous pressure on the Israeli government to do whatever is necessary to stop the constant bombardment along the Gaza border. Despite the Israeli military’s huge superiority in numbers and firepower, Israeli officials acknowledge there’s no way to eradicate the rockets. Now the government is announcing plans for a $300 million dollar anti-rocket system—but it will likely take a year and half to deploy.
For many Israelis, that’s far too long a wait. The town of Sederot, a frequent victim of the attacks, has not yet managed to rocketproof its schools and other vital buildings. A new report from researchers at Israel’s Tel Hai Academic College says one third of the town’s children are suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder because of the rocketing. “It’s had a huge psychological impact on the people,” says Eisen. More than 3,000 residents were recently evacuated from the town—not by order of the government but through the generosity of an Israeli billionaire who said the government wasn’t doing enough for them. Embarrassed by the publicity, the Israeli cabinet has now announced plans for more shelters in the area.
The threat is spreading. On the third day of the ceasefire, a faction calling itself Jondallah—“the Army of God”—displayed a new rocket it calls the Jondallah 1 and announced plans to begin attacks from the West Bank. The militants see the threat as a way of forcing the Israelis to bargain with them. “The rockets are successful,” says Abdullah Jaafar, 32, commander in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Gaza. “The Israeli government is convinced there is no solution to them except negotiations.” It was his group that broke the ceasefire Tuesday—retaliation, he says, for the killings in Jenin and the arrest of 15 wanted men in the West Bank. Jaafar’s men fired two rockets into Sederot. No one was injured, he says, but “it sent a message.”
Not necessarily the message Jaafar might like. “If the rockets continue,” says military commentator Zeev Schiff, “I don’t believe for a moment there is any chance to any political solution.” The alternative? “Of course there is a military solution,” says Schiff. “We can exterminate them with bloodshed. The firepower is in our hands, but immediately [when civilians are killed] everyone jumps.” But Israeli officials fear that the attacks will only get worse: the armed groups are continuing an aggressive arms buildup, reportedly including Katyusha rockets like the ones Hizbullah used this summer in Lebanon. Militants in Gaza say they’re just waiting for the Israelis to come back. “We will not send them flowers and roses,” says Jaafar. “We will send them more rockets.” Abu Abdullah is getting ready.
