Crude Qassams capable of destroying peace process

With suicide bombings on the wane, cheap Palestinian-made rockets have become the weapon of preference against Israel.

WHILE this week's Qassam rocket attacks have demonstrated how dangerous they can be to Israeli children, the real target is not civilians but a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Last Tuesday, the Islamic Jihad group launched at least seven Qassam rockets at Sderot in southern Israel. About 10pm the last reached its target - Adir Bassad and Matan Cohen, ninth graders aged about 14, who had no time to reach a bomb shelter.

While surgeons battled to save the children's lives and limbs, residents of Sderot felt increasingly abandoned by the Israeli Government, which continues to seek a peace agreement with the Palestinian territories while as many 60 Qassam rockets have been fired into Israel since a so-called ceasefire was agreed to on November 25.

At the end of the week, the children and the peace agreement were still alive, but both have been gravely injured. Adir Bassad regained consciousness for the first time on Thursday, while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert authorised attacks on Palestinian rocket launchers.

Qassams have become the weapon of choice due to the difficulty of organising suicide bombers. From a peak of 44 suicide bombings in 2002 they have fallen to just three in 2006 as Israel becomes increasingly stringent in its border control with the construction of the security wall.

Now they've turned to the Qassam - indigenous-built weapons that don't need to be smuggled into Gaza and can be cheaply constructed in homes and small workshops out of such seemingly innocuous ingredients as sugar, fertiliser and traffic lights.

Qassam rockets are the brainchild of Adnan al-Ghoul - literally Adnan the evil demon who feeds on corpses - the chief Hamas bomb manufacturer until he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2004. He devised the weapon after Yasser Arafat rejected the Camp David peace accords in 2000 and declared war on Israel, launching the second intifada.

Qassams are fuelled by a solid propellant made of potassium nitrate (fertiliser) and sugar, which is melted down to a combustible toffee in domestic kitchens. This fuel is packed into casings, made out of the steel poles used to mount traffic lights. The advantage of the Qassam is that it can be fired at Israel over the security wall, largely without endangering the lives of the terrorists. The disadvantage is that they are unguided but the terrorists have learned by trial and error that if they fire enough of them they will eventually murder Israelis.

Al-Ghoul's first rockets were constructed in Gaza and fired at Israel in 2001. They became increasingly deadly as their range and payload was extended. Al-Ghoul's earliest prototypes had a maximum range of 3km, weighed 5.5 kilos and had a 500-gram explosives payload. The Qassam 3 has a range of 10km, weighs 90kg and has a payload of 10kg. In July 2006, Hamas fired a Qassam that it claims has a range of 15km and hit a high school in central Ashkelon.

Qassam rockets are frequently referred to in the media as home-made, as if they were as wholesome as a tray of home-baked biscuits or simply a bit of fun for the kiddies on cracker night. Arafat before his death claimed Qassams hadn't killed anyone, saying: "They only make noise."

In fact, Qassams are deadly and Adir Bassad is only the latest to be left fighting for his life. Fatima Slutzker, 57, and Yaakov Yaakobov, 43, were killed by Qassams in November. The first fatalities were two Israeli toddlers, Dorit Benisian, 2, and Yuval Abebeh, 4, killed as they were playing outside their grandmother's house in Sderot near the border with Gaza in September 2004. Afik Zahavi, also 4, was killed as his mother was taking him to nursery school. Ella Abukasis, 17, was killed as she shielded her younger brother from a rocket. Dana Galkowicz, 22, was killed as she sat on the verandah of her boyfriend's house. Mordechai Yosepov, 49, was killed as he sat near the nursery his two grandchildren attended. In total, Qassams have killed eight people in Israel and five in Gaza - a Chinese worker, a Thai worker, two Palestinian workers and a Palestinian girl, killed by a rocket that fell short of theborder.

Far from seeing a diminution in the number of rockets being launched, the withdrawal of Israelis from Gaza in August 2005 has seen a dramatic escalation in attacks. Uzi Rubin, an Israeli missile defence expert who recently visited Australia, says there is hardly a traffic signal left standing in Gaza because they have all been converted into Qassam casings. Rubin estimates Hamas has launched more than 2000 Qassams over the past five years, but almost half that total havebeen launched since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Israel is frequently accused of being heavy-handed in its efforts to target Qassam rocket launchers and manufacturers. However, its greatest difficulty is that Hamas and Islamic Jihad deliberately operate within residential areas to maximise civilian casualties, as happened in November in Beit Hanoun, the northernmost town in Gaza and the primary area for launching rockets into Israel, where 19 Palestinians were unintentionally killed when the Israeli Defence Force tried to target rocket launchers.

While the criticism was shrill, particularly from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Israel had already withdrawn from Gaza and would never return if the Palestinians would abandon terrorism and pursue peaceful economic development.

But Israel's policy of restraint goes further than unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and unilateral observation of a ceasefire. Last week, Olmert agreed to ease travel restrictions on Palestinian Authority Arabs, including the removal of more than 20 army checkpoints on key roads in Judea and Samaria, transfer $US100 million ($127million) to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for the payment of PA government workers' salaries and increase the number of entry permits for PA Arabs in Israel for work purposes.

Yet while Israel pursues peace with Abbas's Fatah party, Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for the most recent Qassam attacks, says they are being fired in retaliation for raids being conducted by the IDF in the West Bank on Islamic Jihad to prevent more Qassams being manufactured. Without the raids, Qassam rockets could then be fired into the most heavily populated cities in Israel.

Israel has deployed Red Dawn early-warning radar defence systems which give those in southern towns such as Sderot about 20 seconds to seek shelter. In Ashkelon, the system gives residents about a 90-second warning of incoming missiles. Israel is buying an anti-aircraft defence system to counter Qassam rocket attacks and is also engaged in testing a laser rocket defence system that uses laser beams to zap lethal projectiles, from artillery to cruise missiles.

However, the main reason Qassams have not killed more Israelis is because most of them land in open areas in lightly populated southern Israel. All that would change if they could be launched from the West Bank. About 70 per cent of the Israeli population lives along the densely populated coastal strip of central Israel, within firing range of the West Bank.

"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," says an article on Qassams on a Hamas website in a translation by Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre.

Compared with the Israelis' sophisticated weapons, the Qassams are crude but their power to sabotage peace agreements is enormous. So long as Hamas and Islamic Jihad threaten to turn every West Bank home into a potential bomb factory, the IDF has a moral responsibility to Israeli civilians not to pull out and the road to peace will remain blocked.