Two men, their faces blurred and their voices obscured, film themselves loading a rocket launcher in northern Gaza, behind dense fig bushes, vines and thorns.
During the day, the fighters, dressed in civilian clothes, worked quickly and calmly, and within a minute the sound of weapons being readied could be heard all around. Four missiles were plugged into tubes and wires connected to red timers, scraping metal against metal, for launch into the nearby Israeli border city of Sderot and neighboring communities.
The footage, posted on social media by Gaza’s Islamic Jihad al-Quds Brigades, shows missiles being prepared in preparation for an attack that damaged a warehouse in the area, where low-slung villas line the narrow streets last week.
The just-released video shows footage of rocket attacks by Al-Quds Brigades targeting Sderot, Nir Am and other settlements in the Gaza Strip.
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Neighborhoods in Sderot, like the one attacked last week, are hard to escape from the effects of the strike. Blue tarpaulins have been pasted on badly damaged buildings, showing damage caused by rockets hitting walls and punching through red-tiled roofs.
Six months into the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which has taken control of the entire Gaza Strip and killed 34,000 Palestinians along the coast, Sderot continues to come under attack.
Residents of the city have long experienced rocket fire from Gaza, but a return to the status quo before the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 70 people in the neighborhood is causing anxiety.
Sderot, who has long been held up by Israeli leaders and officials as a security bellwether, has been a continuing target of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire for war and “total victory” over Hamas and other groups among the Israeli public. has raised questions about repeated promises.
If Sderot has been here before, it’s because it was one of the main targets when the threat of rocket fire from Gaza emerged nearly a quarter of a century ago.
At the time, organized tours allowed visiting politicians and journalists to see what life was like in Sderot under the fire of the “graduates” and to see the remains of rocket bombs in the bungalow-turned-media center. I looked and observed the damage. Our guides explained that the city was the “air raid shelter capital of the world.”
Today, these bomb shelters remain on every street, many with flamboyant murals painted on them.
The only thing that has changed is that in the aftermath of October 7, many homes now have doors that can be locked from the inside, evidence that the threat has grown, not diminished.
And while rocket alerts have decreased significantly compared to their high points in the first weeks of the war, the threat has not disappeared.
In the past two months alone, 70 rockets have been fired into the Sderø region, including several attacks last week.
Importantly, the rockets that targeted Sderot, Ashkelon and Ashdod last week were fired from northern Gaza rather than from Rafah, where Israeli leaders have threatened new attacks. Gaza’s remote ruins are visible from the edge of the city.
In response to the rocket launch, the Israel Defense Forces announced that it was preparing to raid two neighborhoods in Beit Lahia where the rocket was launched.
This week, tour groups flocked to the site of the now-demolished police station in Sderot, which was briefly occupied by Hamas militants on October 7. A poster was posted promising a monument there, and a flag was tied to a tangle of rebar that remained sticking out of the ground.
Among the visitors were Lisa Obadiah and Eli Obadiah from Petah Tikva, a sprawling central city just next to Tel Aviv.
“It’s still not safe here,” Lisa said. “It needs to be made safe. And if Sderot is not safe, Israel is not safe.”
“We will never be safe until Hamas is destroyed,” Eli added. “We need to enter Rafah and kill every single Hamasnik.”
Eli was skeptical that Israel had international support for a ground invasion. “Biden won’t let us get the job done,” he said.
In interviews with Israeli media, some have suggested that pressure by authorities to return people to Sderot, including financial incentives, is driving renewed efforts to attack the city.
“I don’t have a lot of intuition,” Oshrat Hazot told Israel’s Channel 12. While packing my bags in Tel Aviv to fly home last month. “I feel that if we go back there, everything will start again, because Hamas knows what they are doing.” [the Israeli government] Please set your return date. ”
The bigger question for many is whether the IDF’s goal of completely destroying Hamas is an achievable goal. According to recent polls, a majority of Israelis think the chances of that happening are “very low” or “very low.”
This sentiment is supported by a U.S. intelligence assessment released in March.
“Israel will likely face armed resistance from Hamas for many years to come.” The report said:“And the military will struggle to neutralize Hamas’ underground infrastructure that allows the rebels to hide, regain strength, and surprise Israeli forces.”
Despite Israeli officials recently telling the New York Times that Israel has completed large-scale combat operations in the area, there are still approximately 3,000 He said there were 4,000 Hamas fighters present.
Michael Milshteyn of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and Africa Studies said that while many of Hamas’ offensive military capabilities have declined, the “Catch-22” facing Israeli security policy is that Israel’s complete I believe that it would be difficult without a strong occupation. Without political will and international support, Israel will be forced to confront the Hamas threat in Gaza.
“A reset happened,” Milshtein said. But what is clear is that the reset is not a return to the pre-rocket era. “You can’t make Hamas go away. It hasn’t gone away. It has suffered dramatic damage. But it will continue to do so for decades to come.”
A man carrying a toddler appeared outside a strip mall in Sderot. He did not give his name, but he explained that he had returned from staying with his wife’s family a month ago. “It’s strange to be back here. We’re still at war. At night you can hear gunshots in the distance. They’re still shooting rockets at us.”
Yoav Buskila told in his wine shop how the outlook has changed for people living and working in Sderot since October 7. “We’ve been living with rockets for 20 years,” the 61-year-old said. “And we accepted that. But now something has to change. We need a big war to end Hamas.”
