Swarms of locusts over Gaza
Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 1, 2009
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The screen shows what look like two swarms of green locusts over the
Mediterranean Sea, approaching the Gaza Strip.

These are not locusts, though, but more than 50 Israel Air Force fighter
jets that participated last Saturday in the unprecedented and astonishing
air strike that was the opening act for Operation Cast Lead against Hamas.

The entire attack, during which 50 Hamas targets were hit, took exactly
three minutes and 40 seconds.

Each green dot on the screen represents four fighter jets which fly in
formation. Each swarm has several "foursomes" and was led by a veteran pilot
who, like a conductor in an orchestra, needed to ensure that all of the
aircraft carried out their missions in complete synchronization.

These new details were revealed on Thursday, the sixth day of Operation Cast
Lead, which until now has been mostly fought by the IAF.

The aircraft have flown close to 600 sorties over Gaza, bombing several
hundred targets from rocket launchers and weapons storehouses to Kassam
manufacturing plants, smuggling tunnels and homes of senior Hamas
operatives.

Most of the targets were prepared ahead of time by the Shin Bet (Israel
Security Agency), the Southern Command and Military Intelligence.

During its flights over Gaza, the IAF also works to produce new targets such
as rocket cells and their launchers. Already two years ago, the IAF decided
to open a joint operations center in the Southern Command headquarters in
order to "close" intelligence and operation "circuits" faster than before.

This center works in cooperation with the IAF's main command-and-control
center located underneath IAF headquarters in Tel Aviv. It is there, that
decisions are made to carry out targeted killings, like the bombing Thursday
of Nizar Rayyan, one of Hamas's top clerics and leaders.

The IAF films almost all of its bombings, not just to be able to release the
videos to the media but more importantly to study the pictures.

"Each operation is extremely complicated since it requires not just a
well-trained pilot but also precise intelligence on the target's exact
location," a defense official explained Thursday.

One example was in the bombing of weapons-smuggling tunnels in Rafah, along
the Egyptian border. In the video, one can see the bomb dropped by a fighter
jet hit a structure which is built over the tunnel's entrance. Suddenly,
several hundred meters away, there is another explosion at another entrance
to the same tunnel and caused by explosives that were packed inside.

With over 400 Palestinians killed since the beginning of the operation, the
UN has claimed that a quarter are innocent civilians. While the IDF says it
regrets the loss of innocent life, tactically the ratio is relatively low,
considering the urban warfare setting Hamas operates from within and the
fact that the terror group uses civilian infrastructure, as well as
civilians as human shields.

Despite this, the IAF does the maximum to minimize collateral damage and in
many cases calls homes before bombing them to allow the inhabitants several
minutes to evacuate before the bombing.

In some cases though the residents decided to climb to the roof of their
homes hoping that the IAF would not bomb if it saw people from the air.

In response, the IAF fired nearby the building, showing its determination.
The people are then seen fleeing the building which is then bombed, setting
off secondary explosions caused by the large weapons cache stored inside.

The importance in targeted killings cannot be underestimated. In 2004, for
example, within the span of a month, Israel killed Hamas founder Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz Rantisi, After the spate of
assassinations, Hamas asked Israel for a hudna, cease-fire.