Operation Pillars of Cloud: Day 2.

Today Israeli air and naval forces have attacked approximately a 160 targets within Gaza. According to Israeli sources 126 of these targets were rocket launching sites and the rest were munition stores. If this is true then the Israeli operation appears to be a surgical attempt to degrade Hamas and other militant groups ability to fire rockets into Israel as opposed to an attempt to decapitate Hamas' political infrastructure or inflict maximum casualties. Special attention is being paid to Farj 5 rockets. These are long range (up to 75km) unguided rockets that have been brought in from Libya in substantial numbers and put Tel Aviv within range of Hamas attack. Today there have been a reported 7 deaths in Gaza added to the 9 killed on Wednesday.

In response militants in Gaza (not exclusively Hamas) have fired at least 250 rockets into Israel. Around 80% of these have been intercepted by Israel's 'Iron Dome' missile defence system although Israel appears to be downplaying the effectiveness of this system in an effort to get the militants to deplete their missile stores. At least one of these missles has managed to get through striking an apartment block in Kiryat Malakhi killing three and seriously wounding three others- all civilians. Most worryingly a rocket (presumably a Farj 5) struck Rishon Lezion around 15km (9miles) from Tel Aviv. With a population of around 400,000 Tel Aviv is very much Israel's second city and is home to an international airport. As a result any level of rocket fire on the area will produce unacceptable levels of damage and civilian casualties that simply will not be tolerated by Israel. Therefore the attack on Rishon Lezion now makes it extremely likely that Israel will deploy ground troops into Gaza either overnight or at dawn tomorrow. Obviously it depends on how those ground troops conduct themselves but this might not actually be a bad thing because attempting to destroy munitions stores in areas with a dense civilian population using air-strikes is incredibly dangerous.

There is a lot of concern over what Egypt's response to a ground incursion will be but I think that President Morsi should do what he always should have been doing and concentrate on his own country rather then trying to whip up support by attacking Israel.


16:50 on 15/11/12.