In response, Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip have killed at least 26 people, according to Palestinian officials and the Israeli media.
Here’s what you need to know about the rockets fired from Gaza and the Israeli air defense network intercepting them.
What is Iron Dome?
Israel’s Iron Dome is an air defense system developed by the Israeli firms Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, with financial and technical support from the United States.
First put into service in 2011, it is designed to stop short-range rockets and artillery like those fired from Gaza. Two separate systems, known as David’s Sling and Arrow, are designed for medium- and long-range threats, including planes, drones, rockets and missiles.
Iron Dome relies on a system of radar and analysis to determine if an incoming rocket is a threat, only firing an interceptor if the incoming rocket risks hitting a populated area or important infrastructure.
The interceptors, which are fired vertically either from mobile units or a static launch site, are designed to detonate the incoming rocket in the air, producing the explosions in the sky that have come to accompany warning sirens during recent Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.
Speaking to Israel Hayom this week, defense officials said that the hardware had not changed since the system was first deployed, but that new software changes had made the system more capable as the years went by.
Moshe Patel, director of the Defense Ministry’s Homa directorate, told the right wing newspaper Iron Dome had the “ability to counter cruise missiles, drones and more,” including “threats that don’t even exist in the field at this time, but will probably emerge in the coming months.”
But some critics of Iron Dome have long say it fundamentally serves to prolong conflict.
“Over time, Iron Dome may do them more harm than good,” Israeli political scientist Yoav Fromer wrote in an essay for The Washington Post in 2014. “Iron Dome’s ability to protect Israelis from periodic rocket attacks so far will never remove the strife and discontent that has produced the motivation to ruthlessly fire them in the first place.”
How successful is it at stopping attacks?
However, some defense analysts question those numbers, arguing that the Israeli figures for successful interception are unreliable and that groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad that fire rocket and artillery from Gaza have adapted to the system.
“No missile defense system is perfectly reliable, especially against an evolving threat,” Michael Armstrong, an associated professor at Brock University who has studied the system’s effectiveness, wrote in a 2018 assessment for the National Interest.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military again said that 90 percent of rockets that reached Israeli airspace were destroyed by Iron Dome. Roughly 500 missiles had been fired from Gaza since the start of the conflict, military officials said.
Iron Dome has changed life for many Israelis during recent conflicts, allowing a degree of normality in southern parts of the country that were once under the heavy shadow of rocket strikes.
Supporters of the Iron Dome system have said that it has stopped the need for Israel to send in troops to Gaza during times of conflict, as it had done during 2008 and 2009.
The system’s comparatively low cost — as it only fires on threats to human life or infrastructure, fewer interceptors are needed — also makes it attractive to foreign governments, including the U.S. Army which has bought two batteries itself.
“The house is not protected, and it is not realistic to get to the neighborhood shelters, especially when the barrages are so continuous,” Guy Mann, a resident in Ashkelon, told Israel’s Army Radio on Tuesday after his building was struck by a rocket. “We can only rely on the Iron Dome and luck.”
What rockets are fired from Gaza and what problems do they pose for Iron Dome?
Though Iron Dome has been in use for a decade, rockets are still fired into Israel during times of tension with Palestinian groups. Even at the upper estimates of Iron Dome’s success rate, some can get through to populated areas.
Experts who track the weapons arsenals of Hamas and Islamic Jihad estimate have said that the groups may have tens of thousands of rockets, often made with little more than explosives and metal casing.
In just an hour on Tuesday afternoon, more than 200 rockets struck southern Israel, including the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon just north of Gaza, according to media reports. Two residents of Ashkelon were killed, and three others hospitalized, officials said.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both designated terrorist groups by the United States, were initially aided by advisers from Iran and other allies with supplies smuggled over the Egyptian border. However, much of the work can now be done domestically by Palestinian experts.
“What they need is very minimal,” Yaakov Amidror, a retired major general and former Israeli national security adviser, told The Post in 2019. “They have all the capacities inside.”
Hamas, which now controls Gaza, began producing a rocket called by the name Qassam in about 2001, during the second intifada. At first, the rockets had a range of just two or three miles but later versions, such as the “Qassam 3,” have a range of about 10 miles.
Some rockets have gone far further: In 2019, the Israeli military said a Palestinian rocket that hit a house near Tel Aviv had a range of 75 miles. The homemade rocket injured seven, the military said.
Low-range rockets are also a threat, as Iron Dome is less effective at ranges of 2.5 miles of less, Michael Herzog, a retired brigadier general in the Israel Defense Forces who is now a fellow with the Washington Institute, told The Post in 2019.
Though the weapons are often crude and many lacked guidance systems, their sheer numbers and low cost are an advantage against Iron Dome. While a rocket may cost as little as a few hundred dollars, each interceptor costs around $80,000, according to reports in the Israeli press.
This report has been updated.
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2021-05-11 16:47:00Z
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