Hamas militants in the northern Gaza Strip fired at least 25 rockets at a nearby Israeli town on Tuesday, renewing right-wing criticism in Israel of the government's decision to limit some military operations in the war.
Hamas said in a statement it attacked the Israeli town of Netivot, about six miles from the Gaza border. Most of the rockets were either intercepted by Israel's missile defense system or fell in open areas, and there were no immediate reports of casualties. However, Israeli police said at least one building was damaged.
The attack highlighted Hamas's continued ability to threaten Israeli civilians with rocket fire, despite more than 100 days of a devastating Israeli air and ground offensive aimed at destroying the group's military capabilities.
The rocket fire also highlighted the competing pressures facing Israel's leadership: widespread popular demand to dismantle Hamas, calls from right-wing politicians to be more aggressive in the campaign, pleas for concessions from the families of hostages held by Hamas to ensure their return and the global outrage at the carnage and destruction in Gaza.
Israeli military analysts say the army has significantly dented the rocket-launching capabilities of Hamas and other smaller militant groups in Gaza since the start of the war, but has not eliminated them – a process they say could take months, if not longer, to complete.
“The sustained firing of missiles shows us that we have not completed our mission,” Yaakov Amidror, a retired general who served as national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in an interview. “There are still areas we need to clean up.”
According to Gaza health authorities, more than 24,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel sparked a full-scale war. According to the United Nations, over 85 percent of Gaza's residents have been displaced and many are at risk of hunger and disease. The U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees said Tuesday that the war had caused the largest displacement of the Palestinian people since the displacement and flight of hundreds of thousands of them in the late 1940s in the wars surrounding the creation of Israel.
“People in Gaza are at risk of dying of hunger just miles from trucks full of food,” Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Program, said Monday. “Every hour lost puts countless lives at risk.”
On Tuesday, Israel and Hamas confirmed that Qatar had brokered a deal between Israel and Hamas that would allow Gazans to receive more medicine and other humanitarian aid in exchange for supplying medicine to Israeli prisoners held there .
Before the war, the Israeli military estimated that Hamas and other groups in Gaza had an arsenal of over 10,000 rockets, but officials recently said that well over 12,000 were fired at Israel during the war.
How many remain in the hands of Hamas and its allies is unclear. Israel Ziv, a retired general who formerly commanded Israeli forces in Gaza, told Portal that 10 to 15 percent of Hamas's prewar rocket corps, made up of about 1,000 militants, were believed to still be alive and that the group was still around I have 2,000 rockets left.
Israeli officials have said in recent weeks that their campaign against Hamas is moving into a more targeted phase amid mounting international criticism over the civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave.
On Monday, the Israeli military withdrew a division from the northern Gaza Strip. This was part of a broader troop withdrawal aimed, among other things, at reducing the burden of the war on the Israeli economy. After the rocket fire on Tuesday morning, right-wing members of Mr. Netanyahu's wartime government called for an urgent review of that decision.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's far-right national security minister, said the decision to withdraw some soldiers was “a serious, serious mistake that will cost lives.” Mr. Ben-Gvir, one of Mr. Netanyahu's most combative allies, has called on Israel to reoccupy the Gaza Strip indefinitely.
The rocket fire “proves that the capture of Gaza is essential to achieving the war's objectives,” Ben-Gvir said in a statement.
The Biden administration has pressured Israel to scale back its offensive to reduce civilian casualties and allow people displaced from the northern Gaza Strip to return home – although the Israeli government insists they will not do so soon can return. At a news conference Tuesday, John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said: “We hope that the withdrawal of these troops and this announced transition that they have made will allow people to return to the northern Gaza Strip.”
In the first weeks of the war, Hamas-led militants fired dozens of rockets almost continuously across Israel, driving crowds of Israelis into fortified shelters. But rocket fire has eased as Israel's airstrikes and ground offensives continue and Israeli troops have captured large parts of the Gaza Strip.
A Hamas official said the slowdown was a strategic decision and not a sign of a severely depleted arsenal, adding that the group had enough weapons to continue fighting for many months.
“It is very clear that this war will continue for a long time,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the news media. “It is obvious that they will not bring to market everything they have now.”
Israel's goals “have proven to be fantasies,” he said, adding: “The attack on Netivot today is proof that Israel's strategy is not working.”
On Monday, Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel had completed its “intensive” ground operations in the northern Gaza Strip and would soon conclude this phase of fighting in the south. He told a news conference that Israeli forces had managed to dismantle Hamas' armed battalions in the north and were “now working to eliminate pockets of resistance,” describing the Israeli military's successes as “very impressive.”
Israeli leaders have repeatedly told the public that fighting will continue for months, even as the military has announced the deaths of at least 185 Israeli soldiers since the ground invasion began in late October.
“It is a mistake to reduce the strength of Israeli military activity in Gaza and the forces stationed there in the current situation,” Gideon Sa'ar, an opposition lawmaker from the National Unity Alliance who joined the emergency government formed after the start of the war, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Mr. Netanyahu has tried to express confidence that the Israeli offensive in Gaza will allow tens of thousands of Israelis who have fled their homes near the Gaza border to return home, but ongoing rocket attacks have dampened those hopes.
“We are determined to rebuild the towns and kibbutzim in the so-called periphery of the Gaza Strip to send residents home and bring even more prosperity than before the war,” Netanyahu told local leaders in southern Israel on Tuesday, according to a statement his office. “But to do that we must first defeat Hamas.”
Sergey Davidov, who runs a car wash in Netivot, the town hit by Palestinian rocket fire on Tuesday, said the number of his customers has declined since the start of the war. Some are Israeli reservists who have been called up to fight, while others are uncomfortable traveling to the border area.
“I feel like the government is behind us economically,” including by providing aid to war-hit businesses, said Mr. Davidov, who like most Israelis supports the war against Hamas. “But in terms of security? Not quite.”
Thomas Fuller contributed reporting from San Francisco.