Palestinian militant groups operating in the Gaza Strip launched their largest ever strike on Israeli targets on May 11-12, amid escalating tensions in the longstanding conflict between the two sides. The Al Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas which governs Gaza, but is considered a terrorist organisation by Israel and the United Sates, reported that it launched 130 rockets towards Tel Aviv and other Israeli population centres on the 11th. It claimed these strikes were launched in response to Israeli attacks on targets in Gaza, which effectively decapitated several key figures in the Palestinian leadership and levelled civilian tower blocks. Although Israel has endured much larger attacks in the past, most notably from the Lebanese Hezbollah militia which benefits from considerable Iranian, North Korean and Syrian support, attacks from Gaza have never been so large in the past. One reason is the ongoing Israeli blockade on Gaza, which tightened significantly following a Western-backed coup against the government of President Omar Al Bashir in Sudan, as Sudan had previously been a key provider of arms to Hamas and had Africa’s third largest arms industry. Israel previously relied on its Iron Dome air defence system to neutralise rocket artillery attacks, although the damage done by the strikes raised serious questions regarding the system’s effectiveness. 

By the end of May 12th Palestinian militants were reported to have fired over 1,050 rockets at Israeli targets in under 48 hours in an unprecedented show of force, with the damage done by the unguided weapons underlining the limits of the Iron dome’s capabilities. Iron Dome interceptions were reported at only around 200. The Iron Dome entered service in the Israeli Defence Force from 2011, and is relied on to defend Israeli targets from attacks much larger than those Palestinian militants are capable of – most notably from Hezbollah which is thought to be able to sustain barrages by tens of thousands of rockets at a time. With each interceptor costing over $40,000, which while relatively low for a surface to air missile is still more an order of magnitude higher than the cost of a basic artillery rocket, defending against relatively cheap rocket attacks will be extremely costly for Israel. This is particularly serious when considering that the chance of interception is well below 100%, and that many rockets require multiple missiles to neutralise them. Even with an unrealistic 100% interception rate, neutralising all the rockets fired would have cost $42 million. 

With Israeli defences proving vulnerable to attacks from militants based in Gaza, the Iron Dome’s ability to counter more serious threats has been brought into question. Clashes with Palestinian militants notably follow the penetration of Israeli defences by an unknown missile reportedly launched from Syrian territory. The missile landed near the Israeli nuclear facility at Dimona, which is thought to be the heart of the country’s nuclear weapons program, and closely followed reports of an Israeli cyberattack on an Iranian nuclear facility. A number of unverified reports claimed that the strike was carried out by an Iranian short ranged ballistic missile – likely a Fateh-110 – which was fired as a warning to Israel to highlight its vulnerability. Israeli sources claimed that the missile had landed there accidentally after being launched by a Syrian S-200 air defence system against Israeli fighters. Israel is expected to invest more heavily in air defences in future, and potentially may seek to further modernise the Iron Dome and improve its reliability, although efforts by its adversaries to develop munitions which are more difficult to intercept could seriously undermine such efforts. 

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