Saturday brought a turning point to Operation Strong Cliff.* Everybody was expecting one, the start of an IDF ground operation in Gaza Strip. Instead, at 4:30PM, July 12, 2014, Hamas made history. After almost a week of brutal bombings of Gaza, it pulled out its best missiles and hit Nahariya, a Jewish town on the border with Lebanon.
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Israeli tracking of rocket fire from Hamas.
The list of "Red Color" sirens heard on July 12, 2014, 4:30PM starts with Nahariya, 170km north of Gaza. "Tzeva Adom" (Red Color) is the IDF code for approaching missiles. One missile fell on an open space in the town, setting a distance record for Hamas. It fire capabilities cover the entire Coastal Plain.
There were at least two other massive launching events at 3PM and 4PM. The launching included medium and large range rockets and short-range mortars.
Ashkelon, near Gaza, was hit seven times during the day. In one of the sites hit, a fire started.
In 2012, during Operation Pillar of Cloud, I used official IDF data and calculated a success rate of 25% of the antimissiles used. This was in contradiction to the 75% claimed by Hebrew media. In the
linked articles I described the
statistical manipulations used by the IDF.
More careful than then, the IDF is now reporting the success rate on a daily base. It is below 25%.
Day...............Launchings...Intercepts...Success Rate
Monday.........63...................11................17%
Tuesday........157.................29................18%
Wednesday...130.................24................18%
Thursday.......197.................44................22%
Friday............137.................27................20%
Saturday........124................10..................8%
A point to keep in mind is that the price of the launched rockets starts at $100 for cheap Kassam missiles. Every antimissile launching costs over $50,000.
In the following night, four soldiers from Shayetet 13, the IDF Naval Commando, were hurt while unsuccessfully trying to invade a Hamas launching base. They were taken to the hospital in Ashkelon, the most hit town on Saturday.
On the Jewish Shabbat, Hamas launched its best rockets and shocked Israel.
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