If an enemy fires a rocket at you it should be reasonably easy with radar analysis to figure out the approximate launch location. ,The Gazans have been trying to kill civilians in Israel for 22 years (partial list) so the Israelis have had plenty of time to tune the software and hardware necessary. The question for today is why the Israelis don’t shoot back at the launch locations. Israel has moved a lot of 155mm artillery pieces into and around Gaza. The range of one of these guns is 13 miles and the shells aren’t expensive by military standards. If a launch is detected, why not at least shoot back with a 155mm shell or two?
Palestinians seem to be confident that no return fire will be directed at them. Gazans fired a salvo at Tel Aviv on New Year’s Eve, for example:
If 155mm shells were a standard response to such launches, you’d expect Gazans to run away from the launch site immediately after seeing a launch. Instead, the audio track of this video records a crowd of Gazans cheering as spectators:
I’m sure that Israel would be criticized for returning fire, but I’m not sure what international law would be broken by doing so. If someone shoots are you, you can shoot back, right? That’s true even in California! If a 155mm shell happened to land on one of the handful of Gazans who opposes war with Israel, that’s a shame, but there is no requirement that return fire hit its target within a specified number of meters (indeed, the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Party of Allah (“Hezbollah”) all sometimes launch projectiles that fall short of Israeli territory and, presumably, hit people who weren’t the intended targets). If the practice of returning fire were standard, presumably the civilian death toll would quickly fall as people learned to run away after seeing a rocket launch.
What am I missing? Why has Israel trained the Gazans to believe that rockets can be launched without any possibility of return fire?
Here is a boots on the ground comment to your blog post from a resident of Tel Aviv:
[ @Viking if you notice they often fire at exactly on the hour. These are timed launches on automatic from one time use sites.
I believe we do hit back but for example last week they set up a launcher 300m from tents. My understanding is that we still won’t return fire without eyes on the target.
By contrast I think targets in Lebanon and Syria are shelled immediately. ]
Same commenter filmed Iron Dome interceptor missiles, including one crashing to the ground at 52 or 53 seconds in.
And a second comment from somebody using the adjective “we” about Israelis:
[also, if it was known that we would return fire automatically, there’s a good chance that they’d chain as many women and children as possible to as many launch sites as possible, “for the cause”.]
Thanks, Viking. At a minimum, though, wouldn’t a policy of returning fire at least help persuade ordinary Gazans to try to prevent Hamas and PIJ from launching rockets from their neighborhoods? 75-85% of Palestinians support Hamas/PIJ, but that doesn’t mean they want to be active participants in potentially deadly fighting. If Israel won’t return fire because there might be civilians around then Hamas will simply launch all rockets from right where civilians are around to serve as shields and also provide a cheering section.
I was mainly relaying some comments from people on a Mastodon social network where I am participating. I don’t claim to know the optimal return fire policy.
They claim to be Israelis living in Israel, and they are sharing what they consider the official motivation.
There was also a conspiracy style comment, that MOSAD wants the war to go on, and nothing is better than a steady stream of missiles aimed at civilians for keeping public opinion in favor of war. Thus a motivation for a halfhearted military response.
I personally agree with some of your prior suggestions, that you need heavy bombing and casualties to make the other side capitulate, like in Japan and in Germany, in WW2.
Viking: Thanks for the insight.
(Note that I’m not an advocate for “heavy bombing and casualties”. I have tried to point out that providing advance warning of airstrikes isn’t likely to result in killing a lot of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters. Also that with UNRWA to provide food, health care, education, etc. and with Gazans having stated an expectation that taxpayers outside of Gaza will fund all of their reconstruction they have little incentive to abandon their 75-year-old military campaign. I have no idea how many people have been killed so far (beyond the official Hamas statistic that is uncritically cited by our media), but we do know for sure that the deaths haven’t caused the Gazans to lose faith in the inevitability of prevailing militarily.)
There are lots of good mobile radar system to detect enemy rocket launches, and compute the launch location. There are a couple of reasons that Israel does not take out the launch location. The main goal is to intercept the rockets and prevent casualties and damage, for which the Iron Dome system is very effective, but expensive, each intercept missile is probably two magnitudes more expensive than the Hamas space program rocket. Hamas is also doing a shoot and run, so you are destroying a launch point which will probably never be used. To hit a target with accuracy using a 155 mm round, you would use the Excalibur round, but at a cost of $70k per round, it is almost as expensive as the Tamir missile (the intercept part of Iron Dome). To use regular 155 mm shells you would require a drone with constant eyes on target, it usually takes two or three regular 155 mm shells to accurately hit a target with feedback from a spotter drone.
From an economic and military view point, it makes more sense to hit the areas where you have intelligence on the manufacturing location of the rockets, rather then the launch points which are always changing, otherwise you are just playing a game of wack a mole.
Against Lebanon and Syria they are firing at launch trucks and artillery, in which case it makes military and economic sense, because the launch trucks and artillery are expensive and not easily replaceable.
Thanks, Pavel. How much is a regular 155mm shell? $70k per round is too much!
philg, from a quick search it looks like there is inflation in the market due to an increase demand, pushing the cost of one 155 mm round to $3k. You will need at least three of these per target and a spotter drone, for every rocket launch point you will hit two buildings beside the main target and the Hamas rocket enthusiasts will be long gone, so three building will be damaged or destroyed and anybody inside probably dead. More effective to find the rocket manufacturing location.
Maybe its time to start a business manufacturing 155 mm rounds. We can probably put together a budget Excalibur version using a cheap GPS, cheap IMU (now about $2 each), Arduino, servos and fins. Due to high demand, good profit margins in 155 mm these days.