Iron Dome v rocket

As rockets fire into southern Israel, the iron dome provides relief and security to Israeli citizens.

It is day seven out of seven to what the Israelis call Operation Pillar of defence.

It has been seven days since Hamas started launching quite a significant amount of rockets on a daily basis.

There has been a slight decrease in numbers over the days but the average is still about 100 rockets a day.

Depending where you are in Southern Israel, either a siren goes off to alert people or a recorded voice of a woman repeats the words “Tseva Adom,” which means red alert in Hebrew to say that rockets are incoming.

Gaza is so close to the border, that in some places you can actually see the trail of a fireball rising through the sky.

And then you see the trail of another fireball zigzaging through the sky until it hits the incoming rocket.

This is the Iron dome defence system in action and according to the Israeli army it has a success rate of intercepting 86 per cent of enemy rockets.

The whole experience only has a few seconds to be seen.

A few minutes later, there is usually another sound boom, this time it is the Israeli Air Force which bombs the position from where the rockets were fired from.

Even though those who fired the rockets are long gone, this process goes on all day long, less so at night.

Rockets have been at the prime reason for Israel’s assault on Gaza now, and in 2008.

Back in 2008/9, during Operation Cast Lead, Israel claimed they had considerably diminished the arsenal of Hamas and its capability.

Only four years later, it seems it is not the case.

Actually there are more rockets, that have been fired throughout this past week than throughout the entire three weeks of Operation Cast Lead back.

The rockets seem more sophisticated this time round.

Several rockets were fired towards the city of Tel Aviv, but rhey were all intercepted.

This proves that Hamas now possesses long range missiles, that could go as far as 70km.

It also means that Israel is not winning this war, just winning some more time…but next time, and most likely there will be a next time Israel could discover once more that Hamas’s rockets are even more sophisticated with a GPS system, who knows.

It begs the question: why are Israeli policy makers then so short sighted?

Many in Sderot would tell you the decision to attack Gaza from the air is because of the upcoming general election in january 2013.

That would mean that the 12 members of the Al Dallo family lost their lives due to an Israeli air attack as as part of PR stunt for PM Benyamin Netanyahu.

The message being: he is still the strongest man in Israel.