What does a Qassam have to do before Knight-Ridder stops calling the rockets “rudimentary?” Reporter Dion Nissenbaum writes:
Hamas militants succeeded Tuesday in firing a rudimentary rocket into the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon….
Fortunately, Toronto Star correspondent Mitch Potter explains why Israeli leaders are taking the “rudimentary” strike so seriously:
The strike on Ashkelon, however, exposes three extremely strategic vulnerabilities certain to alter the tenor of debate within Israel’s security cabinet. The sensitive sites include:
• The Rotenberg Power Plant, Israel’s second-largest generating station which supplies an estimated quarter of the country’s needs.
• The Ashkelon Seawater Reverse Osmosis Plant, the largest desalination plant of its kind in the world. Launched last August, the facility is ramping up to provide an annual flow of 100 million cubic litres of water, an estimated 15 per cent of domestic demand.
• The Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company, which controls three oil pipelines reaching to the port cities of Eilat, Ashdod and Haifa.
