On the fifth of March, Israeli commandos stopped the voyage of a ship and subsequently boarded the vessel, finding multiple M-302 surface-to-surface missiles on board. The missiles were first flown into Iran before being loaded onto a ship and sent towards Gaza.
Gaza has a history of aggression towards Israel, with over 60 rockets making contact with Israel since the beginning of last year despite the ceasefire agreement first made in 2012. The current governing movement in Gaza, Hamas, denies any involvement in both the past missile strikes and the more recent missile shipment, leaving other groups based in Gaza to take responsibility.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, said that shipping the missiles to Gaza was an effort by Iran to aid Gaza in its bombardment of Israel. The weapons had supposedly been tracked for several months as they were flown around the area, first to Demascus, then Tehran, and then to a southern Iranian port. It was noted that this was not the first shipment of smuggled weapons that had been stopped by Israel, but the lethality of the cargo separates this case from the rest.
The complete disregard of a ceasefire agreement signed over a year ago between Israel and Gaza combined with the seemingly increasing quality of the weapons being smuggled to Gaza have the unrest in the Middle East still showing no signs of slowing.
jack cmaylo • Mar 19, 2014 at 10:58 pm
I found this article interesting because I also recently read about the 30+ rocket-missles that Gaza fired into southern Israel. What interested me was that Gaza has been showing complete disregard for the “cease-fire agreement” that was signed, and continues to wreak havoc on the country of Israel. From looking at the picture above, the missiles that were found look pretty intense and don’t seem like they would be used for anything less than a major attack. I was also unaware of the large amount of smuggled weapons that the Israelis have come upon in recent years.