Additional Iron Dome batteries are being deployed in southern Israel, and flight paths into Ben-Gurion Airport have been rerouted to arrive and depart from the North as the IDF enters a heightened state of alert ahead of the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander Baha Abu Al-Ata, according to Israeli media.
The anniversary will be marked by the PIJ on Thursday.
Hundreds of rockets were fired toward southern and central Israel within a matter of days after Al-Ata was assassinated by the IDF in November 2019. Al-Ata was responsible for a number of attacks against Israel and was the head of the PIJ's military branch, the Al-Quds Brigade, in the Gaza Strip.
The anniversary of the assassination comes on the same week as the death anniversary of former PLO leader Yasser Arafat and the deaths this week of chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and Palestinian security prisoner Kamal Abu Waer.
Tensions also remain along Israel's northern border as the IDF shot down a Hezbollah drone that infiltrated into Israeli territory on Tuesday. No danger was posed to civilians or IDF soldiers.
The IDF has been on alert in northern Israel since July when a Hezbollah terrorist was killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike in Damascus and the group threatened to carry out a revenge attack on Israel.
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