Hamas nearly struck Ashkelon by mistake in June

On June 19, early in the morning, Ashkelon awoke to the undulating sound of an air-raid siren. Afterward it turned out that the rockets, which seemed to be heading toward the city, fell in open ground on the Gaza side of the fence.

Initial reports said they were fired by either Islamic Jihad — which, as opposed to Hamas, remains loyal to Iran — or a different Islamist group operating within Gaza and bridling under the relatively subdued nature of Hamas’s rule of late. But in fact, The Times of Israel has learned, the rockets were launched by Hamas, in a trial run meant to extend the range of the group’s flagship rocket, the M-75.

“It was a test fire,” a source in military intelligence said, noting that the organization has carried out further tests in the direction of the Sinai Peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea as part of its efforts to increase the range and accuracy of its locally made rockets.

The M-75, named after Ibrahim Makadmeh, a Hamas terrorist who was assassinated in March 2003 — he was the first to argue in favor of pitting Israel against the Palestinian Authority by unleashing waves of suicide attacks — is a 122-mm. rocket that, sources say, Hamas engineers severed near the tail, lengthened, stuffed with additional gunpowder, and fixed with new tail wings.

During Operation Pillar of Defense in November, the M-75 surprised many in Israel with its inaccurate but long flight path, twice striking south of Jerusalem in the Etzion Bloc and triggering air-raid sirens in the capital.

The June test flights are part of a larger effort within Hamas — which has “insufficient stores,” according to the officer — to focus on local rocket production in light of the tension with Iran and the smuggling crackdown on the Egyptian side of the border.

Speaking at a joint conference of the Defense Ministry and the Manufacturers Association of Israel earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, the IDF chief of staff, said that smuggling into the Strip has slightly decreased of late and that “the local manufacture is developing all over that area.”

The M-75, since its ostensible successes during Operation Pillar of Defense, has attained a sort of celebrity status in Gaza. In December the Islamist daily Al-Resalah reported that the owner of a local cosmetics company had decided to name a new line of perfume after the rocket. “The fragrance is pleasant and attractive, like the missiles of the Palestinian resistance, and especially the M-75,” Shadi Adwan said, adding that his company wished “to remind citizens of the victory wherever they may be, even in China.”

Elhanan Miller contributed to this report.