Word: qassam
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...bottle rocket by comparison with Saddam's Scuds, but the new Qassam-2 missile developed by Hamas could have a far greater impact. Members of the radical Islamist group in Gaza on Sunday fired two of the home-made rockets into southern Israel - and although their warheads exploded harmlessly in an open field, the political shock waves are still being felt throughout Israel. The Israeli Defense Force responded with three heavy air raids over 24 hours on Palestinian security targets in Gaza City, and sent its tanks back into the Palestinian city of Nablus in the West Bank. And that...
...Even with a limited range of only five miles and a payload of 20 pounds of TNT, the Qassam-2 poses a serious strategic threat. The reason? If fired from the West Bank, it's capable of reaching a number of few Israeli towns. Also, response time would be limited: while Israel would have a few minutes worth of warning to deploy defenses for attacks launched from far-off Iraq or Iran, it would take mere seconds for a missile fired from the West Bank to reach Israeli territory. And while the lumbering Scud launchers can be observed from satellites...
...addition of this homemade missile to the arsenal of Palestinian militants marks a serious escalation of their strategy to drive Israel out of the West Bank and Gaza by making the cost of remaining there too high. Recent months have seen a sharp increase in suicide bombings, and the Qassam-2 allows militants to strike inside Israel without having to cross heavily policed boundaries. Rocket attacks reminiscent of those used by Hezbollah in its protracted war that eventually forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon two years ago underline what Israeli commentators have called the "Lebanization" of the conflict...
...fundamentalists would shy away from me," he admits. Yet to many Americans he fits the profile of a militant Muslim. The Palestinian activist who now resides permanently in the U.S. has given incendiary speeches that trumpeted "Death to Israel!" His mosque is named for Sheik Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a martyred guerrilla leader who preached holy war against the British and Zionist invasion of Palestine in the 1930s. And al-Arian has invited scholars to his Muslim think tank who (unknown to him, he insists) turned out to be terrorist leaders--including one convicted for the 1993 World Trade...
...Hizballah bought or stole a North Korean-designed rocket from Syrian soldiers and passed it on to Hamas. The weapon was smuggled into the Gaza Strip, where a special Hamas engineering unit was set up to replicate it. At the end of October, Hamas launched the first of its Qassam 1 rockets toward an Israeli town. The attack was a dud; the rocket landed in an empty field. But with a range of 3 miles--much longer than the mortars Hamas currently fires at nearby Israeli settlements--the Qassam 1 would add a frightening new dimension to its campaign...