Co-ordinated rocket salvoes suggest Israel’s old enemies are reuniting 

IN JUST FIVE days, starting on April 5th, Israel has been hit by rockets launched from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. In all the cases, the trigger was ostensibly clashes between Israeli police forces and Palestinians in the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. But the fact that rockets were launched from so many sites points to co-ordination among more groups than just the Palestinian militant organisations that actually fired the rockets.

Little goes on in southern Lebanon, from where the largest of the rocket salvoes was fired on April 6th, without the approval of the Hizbullah, an Iran-backed Shia militia. That was underscored on April 9th by a meeting in Beirut between Hizbullah’s secretary-general and leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. Likewise, the launching site on the Golan Heights in Syria is in an area where both Hizbullah and the Iranian expeditionary Quds Force are known to operate, with the blessing of another Iranian client, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. The Quds Force’s Iranian commander, Ismail Qaani, happened to be visiting Damascus, Syria’s capital, at the time.

The rockets caused some damage to Israeli buildings and wounded lightly a few civilians. In no case did they pose a serious threat to Israel. Most were either intercepted by its missile-defence systems or exploded harmlessly. (Recent attacks by militant Palestinian groups within Israel and the West Bank have been more lethal. On April 7th two young British-Israeli women were murdered, and their mother critically injured, in the Jordan Valley. On the same day a car rammed into a group of people in Tel Aviv, killing an Italian tourist.)

Anxious not to escalate warfare during the Passover holiday, Israel has so far retaliated against its neighbours with small-scale air strikes against unoccupied buildings and launch-pads. But the more worrying development is the simultaneous use of launchpads in the south and north, while at the same time Israel is facing increasing Palestinian violence within its borders and the occupied West Bank, exacerbated by the situation in al-Aqsa.

This reflects wider regional developments, in particular the growing self-confidence of Iran and its proxies following recent diplomatic breakthroughs. On March 10th Iran and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement, brokered by China, to end a seven-year rupture of diplomatic relations. Mr Assad has also recently been emerging from the isolation that had been imposed upon him by the rest of the Arab world after the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011. On March 19th he visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE). On April 1st his foreign minister was in Cairo, Egypt’s capital.

The rapprochement and regional realignment are providing unexpected opportunities for other players. Hamas, a Sunni Muslim group, has been split for years into two. A militant wing seeks close ties with Syria, an important base, and Iran, a source of funding and the flagbearer of Shia Islam. On the other side is Khaled Meshal, who has sought to improve ties with relatively moderate Sunni Arab states. Mr Meshal has little love for Syria and Iran. In 2012 he cut ties with both countries and closed the Hamas headquarters in Damascus in protest against Mr Assad’s massacres of Sunni Muslims, particularly members of the Muslim Brotherhood, with which Hamas is closely aligned. Now that Mr Assad is being received back into the Arab fold and Saudi-Iranian relations are improving, he seems to have lost the argument.

This looks like a reversal, even if a temporary one, of the recent trends in the Middle East. Israel, under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, had been at the centre of a growing camp of relatively moderate Arab regimes, united against Iran, and Israel’s enemies were increasingly isolated. In September 2020 Israel signed the “Abraham accords,” establishing diplomatic ties with the UAE and Bahrain. A few months later Morocco also joined. And while the Saudis remained on the outside, it was clear they were a potential partner as well.

Although these diplomatic gains have not been formally reversed, they have been called into question since Mr Netanyahu returned to office in December. The two prime ministers who led Israel in the year and a half that Mr Netanyahu was out of power, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, met Arab leaders openly and frequently. Mr Netanyahu has had just one such meeting since his return to power at the end of 2022 (without even photographs), with Jordan’s King Abdullah. A planned visit to the UAE has been postponed indefinitely. Israeli and Arab diplomats confirm that Muhammad bin Zayed, its ruler who spearheaded the Arab opening towards Israel, is now less eager to be seen in the company of Mr Netanyahu while Israeli riot police are storming Islam’s third-most-holy site. The fact that the Netanyahu’s government is also facing unprecedented protests at home and rare criticism from the Biden administration over its controversial judicial overhaul, now suspended, is another reason for keeping distance from the once almost-omnipotent Mr Netanyahu.

Yet Hamas and Hizbullah risk turning local opinion against them. Previous rocket attacks against Israel from Gaza have provoked devastating Israeli responses, most recently last August. Likewise, a Hizbullah cross-border raid in 2006 triggered a 34-day war in which Israel destroyed much infrastructure, inflicting suffering on the Lebanese population. Neither organisation will be thanked for provoking Israel to unleash its daunting firepower once again. But taunting it at the same time on three separate fronts, at a moment when Mr Netanyahu is weak, is a risk they are prepared to take. ■