The noticeable increase in the number of anti-Israeli attacks in the West Bank since September has been the subject of news coverage, but in the meantime there has also been a noticeable escalation along the border with the Gaza Strip. During the nighttime hours between Wednesday and Thursday of this week, six Grad rockets were fired from the strip at the nearby Israeli city of Ashkelon. Five of them were intercepted by the Iron Dome antimissile system while the sixth apparently fell inside the Gaza Strip.

Since the beginning of January there have been 16 incidents of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza − on average one a day. The incidents have been the work of extremist Palestinian factions, from Islamic Jihad, which fired the rockets overnight at Ashkelon, to other groups inspired ideologically by Al-Qaida.

Since Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, a rule of thumb of sorts was created making it possible to identify when rounds of hostilities would erupt between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza, based on the number of rockets fired from the territory. From the moment the pace returns to one a day, the countdown begins toward the next round of fighting.

Read the article in full at Haaretz.