Israel’s Gaza Challenge: Stopping Metal Tubes from Turning into Rockets
Voice of America
JERUSALEM - The Israel-Hamas conflict that ended with a ceasefire on Friday showed the Palestinian group’s ability to build an arsenal of homemade rockets largely with civilian materials and Iranian expertise, analysts and officials said, a feat it can likely replicate.
The low cost of such arms and the need to rebuild Gaza leaves Israel and the international community with a quandary of how to meet Gazans’ basic needs yet keep ordinary items such as pipes, sugar and concrete from being put to military uses. Current and former officials see no easy answers, saying it is all but impossible to seal off even a relatively small area such as Gaza and to prevent goods for reconstruction from being turned into locally made rockets. Hamas and fellow militant group Palestine Islamic Jihad, both deemed foreign terrorist organizations by Washington, have boosted the quantity and quality of their rockets since the last Gaza conflict with Israel in 2014.Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, right, and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, left, leave a podium after marking Independence Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024. Demonstrators with Georgian national and EU flags rally during an opposition protest against a foreign influence bill as they mark their country's Independence Day, in the center of in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024.