Middle East peace may be closer as Israel successfully tests Iron Dome

upon to provide such security — at least for a while yet.

This is why the news from Israel is so encouraging for those who hope for three things — peace in the region, the establishment of a Palestinian state, and security for Israel. The news has to to do with Iron Dome, an Israeli-developed defensive system against short-range rockets. If the system proves as effective in blunting the short-range rocket threat from Hamas and Hezbollah as the defensive fence system has been in blunting the suicide bombing threat, it will have two beneficial consequences: It will make the Israelis more secure, allowing them to be more relaxed about the security demands they require of the Palestinians. It will also strengthen the hands of the moderates among the Palestinians: With no military option against Israel left (in reality, the Palestinian military efforts against Israel were always more quixotic than serious), the argument that the time has arrived for a settlement with Israel may carry more weight.

As to the strategic threat from Iran: something tells us that Israel, with the blessing if not the direct cooperation of the United States, will see to it that that threat does not materialize.

Iron Dome
Israel had the first successful test of its Iron Dome anti-rocket system on 15 July. The system detected and shot down several BM-21 rockets. The Israelis expect to have the system in action, along the Gaza border, later this year. The manufacturer, Rafael, was offered a large bonus if they got the system working ahead of schedule. Strategy Page reports that when Iron Dome was first proposed three years ago, it was to take five years (until 2012) to get it operational. In addition to the cash incentive, there is also the rockets still coming out of Gaza, and being stockpiled by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Iron Dome uses two radars quickly to calculate the trajectory of the incoming rocket (Palestinian Kassams from Gaza, or Russian and Iranian designs favored by Hezbollah in Lebanon) and do nothing if the rocket trajectory indicates it is going to land in an uninhabited area. If the computers predict a rocket coming down in an inhabited area, a $40,000 guided missile is fired to intercept the rocket. The manufacturer says this makes the system cost-effective. During the past eight years some 10,000 rockets were fired at Israel (Hezbollah fired 4,000 rockets into Israel during the July-August 2006 war, and Palestinian in Gaza have fired