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Last Updated: Jul 10th, 2006 - 16:21:44 |
Sources in the Palestinian Authority have confirmed that terrorists fired a Kassam rocket - some reports say three were fired - from a village near Tul Karem. Tul Karem is a small Arab city under Palestinian Authority-control, located some ten miles east of Netanya (Israel's 8th-largest city, population 175,000). The rocket was fired from the village of Shuweika, just north of Tul Karem, towards the Jewish community of Avnei Heifetz.
The PA sources reporting the launch said it did not succeed because the rocket exploded prematurely, and that the launch attempt was "amateurish."
It was not immediately clear why the terrorists chose to fire towards a sparsely-populated area.
This was not the first time a Kassam has been fired towards central Israel. Before the Disengagement, which included the expulsion from and destruction of four Jewish communities in the northern Shomron, defense experts warned that rocket dangers would increase if the plan would be implemented. Three months before the withdrawal, in May 2005, GSS (Shin Bet) head Yuval Diskin warned the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee not only of the likely ascent of Hamas, but also of the possibility that terrorists might start firing missiles into Israel from northern Samaria.
“Northern Samaria without the IDF," Diskin told the committee, "means terror and the firing of missiles” at Israeli targets. It would leave the IDF without “an effective method of fighting terror in the region.”
© Copyright 5764, 5765 by author and Tsel Harim
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