Five Qassam rockets were fired at southern Israel from Gaza on Thursday morning, on the second day of US President Barack Obama's visit to the Middle East.JPost adds:
After a long period of calm following Operation Pillar of Defense, a Color Red alert sounded in the city of Sderot at around 7:15 am, followed by additional air raid sirens, one of them in the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council.
One of the rockets hit the backyard of a house in Sderot, while another landed in an open area. There were no reports of injuries, but the yard sustained slight damage. Two additional rockets are believed to have landed on Palestinian territory.
According to initial estimates, the rockets were fired from the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.
Israel will be watching "very closely" to see if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will condemn Thursday's Kassam rocket fire on Sderot in his public comments with US President Barack Obama later today, a senior government official said.GANSO confirms that the rockets came from Beit Hanoun.
During Operation Pillar of Defense, the official said, Abbas "stubbornly refused to do so. He even refused to disassociate himself from those attacks."
The official said Israel will also be watching whether Abbas will cease Fatah's unity talks with Hamas. "These rockets were launched from territory controlled by Hamas, and Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist and support peace," he said.
Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today says that one of the rockets ignited a "huge" fire near a kibbutz.
As usual, no one claimed responsibility.
The last rocket was on February 26.
It is notable that Hamas' Khaled Meshal just issued a major paper detailing the political positions of Hamas, and it includes the statement that "Jihad and armed resistance is the right way for the Liberation of Palestine, and the restoration of all our rights, and with it, of course, all forms of political and diplomatic struggle, including in the media, public relations and legal spheres."