Hamas rockets raise controversy in Israel about the direction of the war

Hamas militants in the northern Gaza Strip fired at least 25 rockets toward a nearby Israeli city on Tuesday, renewing right-wing criticism in Israel of the government's decision to scale back some military operations in the war.

Hamas said in a statement that it targeted the Israeli city of Netivot, about six miles from the Gaza border. Most of the missiles were intercepted by the Israeli missile defense system or fell in open areas, and there were no immediate reports of casualties. But Israeli police said at least one building was damaged.

The attack highlighted Hamas' continued ability to threaten Israeli civilians with rocket fire despite more than 100 days of a devastating Israeli air and ground offensive aimed at destroying the group's military capabilities.

The rocket barrage also highlighted the competing pressures facing Israeli leaders: the widespread popular demand to crush Hamas, calls from right-wing politicians to be more aggressive in that campaign, pleas from the families of hostages taken by Hamas to make concessions to secure their return and worldwide outrage over the massacre. And destruction in Gaza.

Israeli military analysts say the army has significantly weakened the rocket-firing capabilities of Hamas and other smaller militant groups in Gaza since the beginning of the war, but has not eliminated them — a process they said could take months, if not longer, to implement. complete.

“The continued rocket fire tells us that we have not finished our mission,” Yaakov Amidror, a retired general who served as national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in an interview. “There are still areas we need to clean.”

More than 24,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 led to all-out war, according to Gaza health officials. More than 85% of Gaza's population has been displaced, and many are threatened by famine and disease, according to the United Nations. The United Nations Agency to Aid Palestine Refugees said on Tuesday that the war caused the largest displacement of the Palestinian people since the expulsion and flight of hundreds of thousands of them in the late 1940s, in the wars that followed the establishment of Israel.

“People in Gaza risk dying from hunger just miles away from trucks full of food,” Cindy McCain, director of the World Food Program, said on Monday. “Every hour wasted puts countless lives at risk.”

On Tuesday, Israel and Hamas confirmed that Qatar had brokered an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would allow more medicine and other humanitarian aid to reach Gaza residents in exchange for delivering medicines to Israeli prisoners held there.

Before the war, the Israeli military estimated that Hamas and other groups in Gaza had an arsenal of more than 10,000 rockets, but officials recently said that more than 12,000 rockets were fired at Israel during the war.

It is unclear how many people remain in the hands of Hamas and its allies. Yisrael Ziv, a retired general who previously commanded Israeli forces in Gaza, told Reuters news agency that he believed that between 10% and 15% of Hamas' pre-war missile group of about 1,000 militants were still alive, and that no The movement still has about 2,000 missiles.

Israeli officials have said in recent weeks that their campaign against Hamas is turning into a more targeted phase, amid growing international criticism over the number of civilian deaths and the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave.

On Monday, the Israeli army withdrew its division from northern Gaza as part of a broader withdrawal of forces aimed in part at relieving the pressures of the war on the Israeli economy. After the missile strike on Tuesday morning, right-wing members of Netanyahu's wartime government called for an urgent reconsideration of this decision.

Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel's far-right National Security Minister, said the decision to withdraw some soldiers was a “huge and dangerous mistake that will cost lives.” Mr. Ben Gvir, one of Netanyahu's most hawkish allies, has called on Israel to reoccupy Gaza indefinitely.

Ben Gvir said in a statement that the rocket barrage “proves that the invasion of Gaza is necessary to achieve the goals of the war.”

The Biden administration has pressured Israel to curb its offensive, in order to minimize civilian casualties and allow those displaced from northern Gaza to return to their homes – despite the Israeli government's insistence that they will not be able to return soon. At a press conference on Tuesday, White House spokesman John Kirby said: “We hope that the withdrawal of these forces and this announced shift will allow people to return to northern Gaza.”

In the first weeks of the war, Hamas-led militants fired dozens of rockets almost continuously across Israel, prompting dozens of Israelis to flee into fortified shelters. But the rocket fire slowed as the Israeli air bombardment and ground attack continued, and as Israeli forces took control of large areas of Gaza.

A Hamas official said the slowdown was a strategic decision and not a sign that its arsenal was severely depleted, adding that the movement had enough weapons to continue fighting for several months.

“It is quite clear that this war will continue for a long time,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. “It makes sense that they wouldn't release everything they have now.”

He said that Israel's goals “proved to be mere fantasies,” adding that “the strike on Netivot today is evidence that Israel's strategy is not successful.”

Israel has ended its “intensive” ground operations in northern Gaza and will soon end that phase of fighting in the south, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said on Monday. He said in a press conference that the Israeli forces succeeded in dismantling the armed Hamas brigades in the north, and that they are “now working to eliminate pockets of resistance,” describing the Israeli army's achievements as “very impressive.”

Israeli leaders continued to tell the public to expect the fighting to continue for months, even as the military announced that at least 185 Israeli soldiers had been killed since the ground invasion began in late October.

Gideon Saar, the opposition MP from the National Unity Alliance who joined the emergency government that was formed after the start of the war, said: “It is a mistake to reduce the strength of Israeli military activities in Gaza and the forces deployed there in the current situation.” He said in a statement on Tuesday.

Mr. Netanyahu has sought to project confidence that Israel's assault on Gaza will allow tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes near the Gaza border to return home, but ongoing rocket attacks have dampened those hopes.

“We are determined to rebuild towns and kibbutzim in the so-called Gaza periphery, to return residents to their homes and achieve more prosperity than before the war,” Netanyahu told local leaders in southern Israel on Tuesday. Statement from his office. But to achieve this, we must first defeat Hamas.”

Sergey Davidov, who runs a car wash in Netivot, the city targeted by Palestinian rockets on Tuesday, said the number of his customers had dwindled since the beginning of the war. He said some were Israeli reservists called up to fight, while others were uneasy about making the trip to the border area.

“I feel like the government is supporting us economically,” said Davidov, who like most Israelis supports the war against Hamas, including by providing aid to businesses affected by the war. “But in terms of security? Not quite.”

Thomas Fuller He contributed reporting from San Francisco.