Defending Israel

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system fires to intercept a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israel near Ashdod, Israel August 6, 2022. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

"This was a very narrow tactical operation with limited targets and a huge tactical success. But there is no real change in the situation in Gaza and it did not relieve the problems of the Palestinian system which is controlled by the Hamas terror group. The lack of strategy and vision for a solution of the conflict has still not changed and this is the challenge that Israel is facing."

"We saw the capabilities of the PIJ — one of the weakest terrorist groups surrounding Israel — which don’t really match the defense capabilities of the Iron Dome"

"The military capabilities of PIJ are now dramatically beneath the level of the capabilities of Hamas."

 Tamir Hayman,  Managing Director, Institute for National Security Studies

 

"[It will take some time for the PIJ to rebuild its leadership structure and train the next generation]. That said there is a risk that there could be a hydra that grows in its place."

"A more centralized leadership structure could follow. One could potentially imagine multiple nodes that would sprout up in its place with multiple cells and with multiple leaders which would make it harder for Israel to dismantle it."

"The primary funder, trainer and provider of arms is Iran, and its ability to provide all of that to Islamic Jihad, as well as Hamas and others, has not diminished in the least. This means that future clashes are a foregone conclusion."

"Israel’s near-total intelligence dominance over the last week probably sent something of a stark message to both Hamas, and perhaps Hezbollah and maybe Iran as well, that Israel has the ability to strike at the top leadership and to do significant damage without a lot of protracted battle."

"Whether that changes their calculus is another story, but it’s the thought that all proxies could bog Israel down in a painful conflict — I think they learned that the opposite was true."

Jonathan Schanzer, Middle East scholar, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants gather at a mourning house for Palestinians who were killed during Israel-Gaza fighting, as a ceasefire holds, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, August 8, 2022. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Israeli intelligence had firm information that Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a proxy militia of Iran's hoping to become as influential and lethal and as useful to the Islamic Republic as Hezbollah has been and continues to be, was planning another attack on Israeli military units or on an Israeli border town. The IDF and the Israeli government have been anticipating a violent response of some kind from PIJ following the arrest of one of its top leaders, in the West Bank.

Following days of tense expectation, a convoy of PIJ trucks making its way to the border inspired the IDF to a preemptive strike, one targeting yet another leader of the Islamist group. A series of rockets from Gaza followed, hundreds aiming for Israeli  towns and villages. In Sderot, a constant PIJ and Hamas target, a family escaped death when a rocket levelled their home. The IDF bombed identified PIJ munitions sites and buildings.

When an apartment building came under target, all residents were first instructed to vacate the building. Palestinian journalists gathered to watch the precision targeting of the building. While the IDF and Gaza's secondary terrorist group were engaged in combat, Hamas made no effort to intervene or to join the conflict. Although Hamas rules Gaza, the PIJ competes with them for influence and power, no doubt leading Hamas to leave the PIJ on its own. Any major losses sustained by PIJ is a win for Hamas.

As for teaching terrorist groups through the IDF's swift and unequivocal action to defang the threat of a terrorist group with clarity, dispatch and accuracy, even to the extent of pinpoint targeting of their leaders, the unfortunate truth is that terrorist groups are inflamed with the passion of hatred of a designated enemy balanced with love of violence and the meting out of death in the delusion of martyrdom; that they might take a reasonable lesson in caution from the event is unlikely.

What the violence did succeed in revealing was the presence within Israel itself of a third column of Israeli Palestinian citizens who cheered wildly when PIJ rockets managed to reach central Israel. 

 

All together a dozen PIJ members were targeted and put out of commission, two senior commanders included. The Israeli army destroyed a number of PIJ military emplacements, destroying underground tunnels across Gaza, in the process. Reality? The tunnels will be rebuilt. The military sites will be reestablished.

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system fires to intercept a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israel August 6, 2022. REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg

Over 1,100 rockets were fired by PIJ toward Israel throughout three days of fighting. 990 of the rockets crossed into Israel; 200 misfired, ending up within Gaza, causing a number of civilian casualties, including the death of Palestinian children. The Iron Dome defence missile system shot down 380 missiles for a 96 percent success rate.

 

All of this, with thousands of Gaza residents given work permits to enter Israel for gainful employment. Israel's Friday strike of the Islamic Jihad leader followed by its Saturday targeted strike on a second leader should amply demonstrate the vulnerability of terrorist leadership to Israel's intelligence capabilities coupled with its capacity for pinpoint-accuracy strikes. 

Khaled Mansour the second PIJ commander killed was hit in an airstrike in the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza where two other terrorists were killed as well. The three-storey building was flattened when struck by the missile, but some deaths of Palestinians during the three-day round of fighting were caused by rocket fire that went awry, a not-uncommon occurrence with rockets lobbed off by both PIJ and Hamas.

PIJ lost its two most senior commanders on the ground, Tayseer Jaabari and Khaled Mansour, as well as sites used to manufacture and store missiles, command headquarters and outposts. The IDF says it hit 170 PIJ targets.  Reuters