Escalation: Hamas launches a Fajr-5 missile at Tel Aviv; no damage or casualties

We may thus see a winding down of the violence, leading, over the weekend, to the re-establishment of an informal cease fire between Israel and Hamas.

Israeli escalation
If the past is an indication, then Israel will move one rung up the escalation ladder in response to this crossing of an Israeli red line before agreeing to a cease fire with Hamas. There are many examples in Israel’s past to think that this is the direction Israel would choose. Here are two such examples.

Saddam Hussein
During the first Gulf War, in 1991, Iraq launched forty-one Scud missiles at Israel, most of them targeting Tel Aviv. The missiles caused damage to some buildings but no casualties (one woman died of a heart attack). Ehud Barak, who became the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) shortly after the war, decided that in order to re-establish Israeli deterrence, Saddam Hussein, who ordered the missile attacks on Israel, should be killed.

Hussein was paranoid about his security, and it was extremely difficult to find out where he will be from day to day, making the planning of his assassination difficult.

Israeli intelligence learned, however, that an uncle of Saddam, to whom Saddam was very close, was admitted to a hospital in late summer 1992, suffering from a terminal illness. The assumption was that secretive and paranoid though he was, Saddam would not miss his uncle’s funeral.

The plan was to be ready to launch the operation anytime after 1 October 1992, because the assumption, supported by medical option, was that the uncle would die sometime in mid to late October. If the uncle was not dead by then, then Israeli agents would infiltrate the hospital’s staff and help the uncle die on schedule.

The plan was to send two units of Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s elite commando unit, into Iraq: one unit, positioned a mile or two from the funeral procession, would “beam” Saddam with a laser beam, while another unit, positioned in the desert some six or seven miles away, would send a guided-missile in the direction of the procession. The missile would pick up the laser beam and “ride” it directly into Saddam’s body.

There were many in the upper echelon of the IDF who adamantly opposed the operation, arguing that it was too risky and that the chances of success were low. Among the opponents were General Uri Sagi, then the head of military intelligence (Sayeret Matkal belongs in military intelligence), and Lieutenant-General Doron Avital, the unit’s new commander.

Barak, though, was the chief of staff, and he persuaded Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to give the go-ahead for the operation. In addition, in a move that upset many in the IDF, Barak circumvented both Sagi and Avital by appointing General Amiram Levin, a former commander of the secretive unit, to be the “facilitator” of the operation.

The daring – critics would say foolhardy — operation was never carried out. During the final preparation for it, a deadly training accident in the Tzeelim firing range scuttled the whole thing. The accident, which occurred while the IDF top brass was watching, involved the mistaken use of a missile with a live warhead instead of a dummy, resulting in the death of five soldiers and the injury of five more.

The accident – which became known as Tzeelim Bet — how it came about, and the high-command intrigues which preceded it, were a turning point for the IDF covert operation establishment. The details of the operation and the accident were kept under wraps until recently.

Ahmed Yassin, Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi
The largest oil tank farm in Israel is located near the southern port of Ashdod. Israel had made it clear to Hamas that any attack on the tank farm would be regarded as an attack on a high-value strategic asset which would constitute crossing of red line.

In early 2004, however, two Hamas suicide bombers tried to scale to fence which surrounds the tank farm, carrying large quantities of explosives with them. Both were killed by guards before getting close to the tanks, but Israel thought there was a need to remind Hamas leaders that crossing red lines was a costly venture.

On 22 March 2004, Israeli planes dropped a bomb which killed Hamas founder and leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin. A month later, on 17 April 2004, Yassin’s successor, Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, was killed in a smilar way (by the way: Ahmed Jabari, who was killed yesterday, had three wives; one of them is Rantissi’s daughter).

In the last eight years, since the killing of the two leaders, Hamas has abstained from attacking what Israel regards as high-value strategic targets.

Until the missile attack on Tel Aviv earlier today.

Israel’s next move
If I were to offer a guess as to how Israel would choose to react to the attack on Tel Aviv, I would say this: I have no idea whether or not Hamas leaders – for example, Ismail Haniya, Hamas prime minister in Gaza — have life insurance policies. If they do, then if I were the CEO of an insurance company which issued a life insurance policy to any Hamas leader, I would cancel this policy today. Now.

Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security News Wire