Hamas Website Reports That The Hamas Has Postioned Their Rockets in Judea and Samaria

June 28, 2005

An article published on the Hamas website reflects the movement’s efforts to extend its Qassam rocket manufacturing capabilities to the West Bank. The writer of the article predicts that the Qassam rockets will create a balance of terror with Israel and serve as the weapon of deterrence in the next phase of the confrontation, providing an adequate response to the Israeli security fence.

“The Qassam rockets in the occupied West Bank -the weapon of deterrence in the next phase.” (the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades website).

General

The current lull in the fighting in the Palestinian Authority administered territories is used by the Palestinian terrorist organizations, with Hamas standing at the forefront, to restore and reinforce their operative infrastructures in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. As part of their efforts to upgrade the arms and ammunition in their possession, the various organizations attempt to extend their capabilities to manufacture and launch Qassam rockets to the West Bank. Such capabilities, in their view, will create a “balance of terror” between the terrorist organizations and Israel (similarly to the model established by Hezbollah in Lebanon ), and provide an adequate response to the security fence built by Israel.

An expression of this concept can be found in an article titled “Will the Palestinian Weapon of Deterrence Develop in the West Bank”, recently published on Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades website¹. The article reviews the advantages of threatening Israel’s main cities with rockets: “The entire distance between Qalqilya and occupied ‘Tel-Aviv’ is no greater than 7 km… The distance between Netanya and Tulkarm is no greater than 4 km. Ramallah and Bethlehem are adjacent to Jerusalem…” The writer of the article predicts that “the Qassam rocket will serve as the key weapon of deterrence in the next phase of the confrontation as the acts of suicide martyrdom served as the weapon of choice during all the previous years”².

This concept has been expressed in practice in the efforts of Hamas during the lull in the fighting to extend the Qassam rocket manufacturing capabilities to the West Bank. Proof of to that was found when Israeli security forces uncovered operative Hamas infrastructures in the northern West Bank that were engaged producting of Qassam rockets. Among other things, a laboratory for manufacturing explosives that contained an improvised Qassam shell casing was exposed in the village of Al-Yamoun (west of Jenin) (see Appendix for details).

1 www.alqassam.ws, June 28, 2005.
2 Ibid.

The translation of the article

Will the Palestinian weapon of deterrence be developed in the West Bank?

Special Report

There are many indications that the Qassam rockets will find their way from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank and that it is only a matter of time. A great deal of evidence indicates that such a change in the West Bank will become a reality [now,] with [the manufacturing and launching of Qassam rockets] in the Gaza Strip entering its fourth year.

Jenin and Nablus

In the last two years, intensive attempts have been carried out in the regions of Jenin and Nablus, mostly by the Al-Qassam Brigades, to make this trend a reality in the northern West Bank, a perpetually “hot” [region], so that it [the Qassam] become the weapon of deterrence in the next phase.

A humble beginning

Even though the beginnings are still humble, they are highly promising. During the past years, the West Bank has been severely hit and, as a result, the infrastructure of the resistance factions has been severely damaged. Nevertheless, this does not diminish the aspirations of the resistance to achieve a balance of terror in the equation [formed] after [the construction of] the fence.

Recently, mortar shells were fired in the Jenin region at the settlement of Ganim, east of Jenin. Short as the range of these mortar bombs may be, in practice, the very ability to launch them, in light of the recurring incursions in the region that make it almost impossible to breathe, is a strong indication of iron will and non-compromising determination.

Underground cave!

In the last month of December, the Zionist intelligence apparatus was dumbfounded to discover a workshop for manufacturing Qassam rockets of the Hamas movement in the town of Yamoun, west of Jenin. In the workshop, located in a smithy inside an underground cave, ready-to-launch rockets were manufactured. In view of this, a campaign of arrests was conducted against 15 of the movement’s activists in Silat al-Hartiya and Yamoun 3.

Several months ago, a cell of the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the PFLP military wing in Nablus, was sentenced to four years in prison by a Zionist court on charges of manufacturing rockets in Nablus. The cell succeeded in launching an experimental rocket to a modest range of only 100 m; however, the implications of these attempts remain enormous.

First Attempt

The first attempt to launch Qassam rockets in the West Bank began in late 2001. In the year 2002, a first Qassam rocket was launched at the settlement [sic] of Netanya. As a result, a power transformer was struck, resulting in a several-hour-long power loss in [the city of] Netanya. Several additional attempts were carried out in Nablus, Tulkarm and Jenin.

What it important, however, is how the situation will unfold should the Zionist army partially withdraw from the cities of the West Bank, after the [construction of the] fence is completed and the resistance [factions] have an infrastructure for the manufacturing of these rockets. In this case, Afula, Hadera, Beit She’an, Netanya, Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem, and other cities will all fall within the range of the Qassam 1 rocket, and there will not even be need for the Qassam 2 rocket. The implication is that this rocket, which was previously looked upon with disdain by many, will serve as the weapon of choice in the coming period of time, as the acts of suicide martyrdom served as the weapon of choice during all the previous years.

Characteristics of the Qassam rocket

There are those who might underestimate the importance of the Qassam rocket. Doing so would be incorrect, for the following reasons:

The difficulty to destroy these rockets’ sources of manufacturing. All the bombings of the workshops carried out by the Zionist army failed. The manufacturing of Qassam rockets has not stopped; quite the opposite, it has been upgraded.

From a technical standpoint, the Zionist army presently does not have any means to intercept an airborne Qassam rocket. The only possibility, therefore, of stopping the fire, if possible, is to strike the operating cells or the rockets them selves, a moment before they are launched.

A preemptive strike against the attacking cell is a complicated and almost impossible affair. According to the assessments of the Zionist army, the members of the resistance bring the missiles in vans and unload them under the cover of agricultural activity. This makes them more difficult to expose. Furthermore, the timeframe available to the Zionist forces is a quarter of an hour at the most. It takes that long for the resistance members to aim the rockets and activate them at a distance using an electronic timer. To foil the action, the army needs to keep combat helicopters in the air for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is, therefore, highly bothersome.

The idea of establishing a security zone in the West Bank is not considered to be an effective one. There are inhabited areas all along the separation line, located close to each other and separated only by the security fence. In addition, there is no territorial depth that can serve as a [safety] zone. The entire distance between Qalqilya and occupied “Tel-Aviv” is no greater than 7 km. The distance between Netanya and Tulkarm is no greater than 4 km. Ramallah and Bethlehem are adjacent to Jerusalem The settlements are everywhere.

Therefore, the Zionist army does not have a magic solution [for Qassam rocket fire]except for one: perpetrating acts of mass murder.

Zionist plans

The Zionists are troubled by the development of the Qassam rocket in the West Bank In spite of intensive arrests designed to prevent the formation of a permanent infrastructure of the resistance [factions], there are no serious security solutions. Therefore, the only solution, as far as the Zionist establishment is concerned, is severe retaliation for every Qassam rocket launched, in order to teach the Palestinians a lesson and make them think a thousand times before launching any kind of rocket.

If a rocket falls on Netanya or Afula, the Zionist air force can carry out an unplanned retaliation resulting in mass murder of civilians in their towns. This will force [in the Israelis’ view] the resistance [factions] not to launch rockets, out of fear for the loss of Palestinian lives.

That is the prevailing idea in the Zionist establishment; the question, however, remains: have all the previous mass murders and the acts of hostility carried out as collective punishment quenched the fire of resistance, or, rather, have they served as a catalyst for the increasing sophistication of the creative methods of the resistance [factions]? 3 This is a reference to a series of arrests of members of a terrorist infrastructure in the village of Silat al-Hartiya (north of Jenin) and in the village of Al-Yamoun (adjacent to Jenin) who were engaged in the manufacturing of Qassam rockets and building a laboratory for arms production (January 25, 2005). See Appendix for details.