Arieh Kovler

Israel’s worrying descent into violence

Rockets are fired from Gaza (Photo: Getty)

I didn’t hear the boom on Monday night. I didn’t hear the siren either, due to some loud renovations. Sitting at my desk in the bomb shelter in my flat that doubles as a home office, I found out we were under rocket attack by reading about it on Twitter.

With the blast door and inch-thick steel window plate closed, I waited for the all-clear. A few minutes later, minor damage was reported to a house just outside Jerusalem, hit by shrapnel from a rocket that flew 40 miles from Gaza. Others were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-rocket system. A dramatic end to Jerusalem Day, when Israel celebrates the reunification of the city under Israeli rule in 1967.

Earlier in the day, violent protests by Palestinians on the Temple Mount were broken up, also violently, by Israeli security forces. Rubber bullets and tear gas met rocks and Molotov cocktails, triggering protests of Israeli Arabs across the country.

Israel tried to calm tensions. The annual Jerusalem Day flag march was routed away from its provocative route through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter. A court decision on the eviction of some Palestinian families from houses in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood was delayed at the government’s urging. But it was too late and probably too little. Hamas fired its rockets and suddenly it was yet another Gaza conflict.

As I write, sirens are once again sounding in Tel Aviv, in the most intense barrage on the city ever

Israel’s Iron Dome is a modern military miracle, a purely defensive anti-rocket system that can shoot incoming projectiles out of the sky. For a decade, Iron Dome has largely neutralised rockets from Gaza, changing the strategic calculus for both Israel and Hamas. Israelis could tolerate rocket arsenals in Gaza, knowing very few would hit home.

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