The Hamas terror group and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) still have enough rockets and fighters to wage additional week-long or even months-long conflicts following the recent hostilities with Israel, according to an assessment by Le Beck, a Middle East-based geopolitical and security consultancy.
“The Israeli operation did not critically cripple Hamas nor PIJ (nor was it meant to) … while both can still fire shorter-range rockets for weeks (if not months), a significant portion of their long-range rocket arsenal has likely been depleted,” according to the Le Beck report, published Tuesday, on the key lessons from the May conflict.
“Hamas and PIJ still have around two-third of the total number of rockets they had at the start of the Israeli operation,” Michael Horowitz, Head of Intelligence at Le Beck, told The Algemeiner. “This means that they may still have up to 17,000 rockets between the both of them, when compared to the 4,350 rockets that were fired during the 11-day conflict.”
“This is not to say that their capabilities to fire or produce rockets haven’t been degraded,” commented Horowitz. “Their missile-production capabilities have been the focus of multiple strikes and they have also fired most of their longer-range rockets. Our assessment is that they fired between 600 to 900 longer-range rockets [more than 40 kilometers].”
“There are already signs that Hamas became more popular amongst West Bank Palestinians than it was before, although it still too early to draw any definitive conclusions. The group will continue to try and gain a broader foothold in the West Bank, regardless of the situation in Gaza,” the report assessed.
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