In an article titled “The Price of the Israel-Gaza War,” the Russian newspaper New Eastern Outlook points out that the recent war has changed many equations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict forever.
The conflict between the two sides broke out on May 10 and mutual rocket attacks between Israel and the Palestinian Resistance continued for 11 days. According to the Israeli army’s press release, since the beginning of the conflict in the Gaza Strip, 1,500 targets have been hit. According to the Ministry of Health of the State of Palestine, during the confrontation with Israel in the Gaza Strip, more than 220 people were killed and more than 1,500 were injured. At the same time, if the Israelis claim that the strikes were carried out exclusively on Hamas targets, then in Gaza, they claim that all the dead are civilians.
According to the details published by the American media on this conflict, it becomes clear that Washington was well aware of its preparation by Israel, which ordered in advance the delivery of a batch of precision-guided munitions from the United States. On this important agreement for these munitions supplies, the US Congress was informed in advance on May 5. A few days before Israel launched an armed attack on the Gaza Strip, the Biden administration approved some 735 million dollars worth of weapons to Tel Aviv, most of which are precision-guided munitions and components to convert conventional bombs into smart bombs, the Russian newspaper reminds us.
All this confirms that Israel’s plans to aggravate the situation in the Middle East were agreed with the United States, which first condemned its aggressive actions in the international arena, and then expressed its support for the bombing of the Gaza Strip.
According to New Eastern Outlook, after Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile defense system began to lose ground on the third day of the armed conflict, the United States, in the end, secretly sent a batch of Patriot air and missile defense systems to Israel to support its Middle Eastern ally. And this happened even though President Joe Biden publicly stated that his country would not interfere in the armed conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis.
The article goes on to say that the American C-17 carrier landed at Tel Aviv airport with a large volume of cargo. The AAAA news agency reported that the American plane was secretly carrying reinforcements for the Israeli army. It took off from Ramstein Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate late in the evening of May 13 and arrived at Ben Gurion Airport on May 14. Although U.S. officials are not commenting on this information, it is worth noting that after the flight of the C-17 carrier, the effectiveness of Israeli air defense, as well as the number of rockets launched by Palestinians into Israel, increased.
Renewed tension in the conflict between Israel and Palestine showed a regular exchange of rocket attacks, as Palestinian fighters who assembled the rockets from improvised materials under homemade conditions managed to cause damage to the Israeli missile defense system and, in particular, to the IDF’s highly publicized “Iron Dome” missile defense system. Although official sources in Israel itself no longer speak of its 100% effectiveness, the reality is that a significant amount of ammunition launched by the Palestinians is breaking its defenses.
It has become clear that the Iron Dome has its bottlenecks, as there are a limited number of missiles in the launchers, it takes time to reload them, and the anti-aircraft missiles do not have a very long range, etc.
The Palestinians fought these bottlenecks by launching massive volleys at specific targets, thus trying to “overload” the Iron Dome batteries covering particular areas, and they sometimes succeeded. That is, with enough mass launches, the Iron Dome cannot repel them. This is confirmed by the recent example where cruise missiles were fired at Israel from the territory of Syria, and the air defense systems could not intercept them.
“It is also worth mentioning that according to various estimates, the cost of producing a rocket for Iron Dome can reach up to $100,000. While even the largest unguided rockets of the Palestinians cost only a few hundred dollars. Therefore, repelling the “white man’s” attack with high-tech missiles is an expensive pleasure if you talk about money.
