Building the Better Palestinian Rocket

Clandestine arms makers like Abu Abdullah have made life in Israel more stressful than ever in recent months. His PFLP is merely one of a dozen or so armed groups that are operating in Gaza. Most, if not all, have rockets. According to the Israeli government, an estimated 640 rocket attacks have been launched from Gaza since July, with about 530 landing inside Israel. The months of bombardment have been the heaviest since militants in Gaza began learning to build and use rockets four years ago. Emboldened by Hizbullah's apparent success in this past summer's Lebanon war, the Gaza militants say they've also made big improvements in their own homemade weapons, packing in more explosives and sending them farther by adding a second engine; some groups have even begun upgrading to military-grade explosives, smuggled in from Egypt. And years of experience have sharpened their aim until they can count on striking within a quarter mile of a chosen target. The Israeli government's efforts to stop them have mostly failed.

Each faction that builds rockets has its own design, with its own name. Some models, known generically as Qassams, have a range of 10 miles or more. The version Abu Abdullah showed me is known as the Moqawama 2 (Arabic for "resistance"). It weighs about nine pounds, is six feet long and has a range of a mile or two. The body, a length of pipe, was bought at a local market and taken to a secret location to be machined. "Not even our own members know where," he says. The pipe was cut into three sections. The first was split to make four fins for the rocket's tail. The second piece, in the middle, is for the engine. The third section has been shaped into a nose cone, with a three-inch hole in the end for adding the explosive. Spoon by spoon, Abu Abdullah lifts it from a plate decorated with an Arabic design in blue and gold. Soon, he says, he will finish "the best rocket I've made so far," the Moqawama 3, twice the length and with a range of 10 miles.

He's eager to watch it fly, but there's no saying when that might happen. A ceasefire went into effect last Sunday. The next day, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered a military pullout from Gaza and offered a prisoner exchange and new territorial concessions if the violence stops. In return, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dispatched 16,000 security forces to the border, mainly to prevent rocket attacks. The truce was violated almost immediately. By Tuesday roughly a dozen rockets had been launched from Gaza, and Israeli soldiers in Jenin killed two Palestinians—a militant and a woman who was nearby. The two sides can't even agree on what areas the truce should cover; the Israelis say Gaza only, not the West Bank, while Hamas and other factions say unless the West Bank is included, it's null and void. "The ceasefire is a very fragile one," said Miri Eisen, a spokesperson for Olmert's office. "We're not going to accept one or two rockets a day," she told NEWSWEEK on Wednesday. "We've accepted it over the past two days to give the ceasefire a chance, but we will defend ourselves."

It isn't a ceasefire if the Palestinian terrorists keep violating the agreement. Israel may have ceased its efforts, but the terrorists sure haven't. As even this report indicates, the rocket makers are busy building the very rockets that will be used against Israel - regardless of whether there's a ceasefire in place or not.

This report also shows just how the terrorists operate. They work in their residential basements, using items scrounged from grocery stores and recipes passed on from other bomb makers. They're getting military grade explosives smuggled in across the border from Egypt.

And Israel isn't able to stop the rocket attacks because of the fear of civilian casualties. It is the Israelis reluctance to cause injuries to Palestinians who may not know that the rocket makers are operating in their homes and basements, that means that the rockets continue to be built and fired into Israel.

So, next time you hear about how civilians got killed or injured when the Israelis attacked a bomb maker's residence, now you know what is really going on. The Palestinians are not going to stop this behavior until they've forced Israel to submit to their will or Israel has crushed the Palestinians and made them realize that there is no chance to 1) destroy Israel; 2) the Palestinians simply cannot beat Israel; and 3) Israel will destroy the terrorist infrastructure and Palestinian leadership if necessary (though the terrorist infrastructure and PA are often one in the same).