Israel-Gaza Border Sees ‘Quietest’ Year, Lowest Number of Rocket Attacks Since 2005, Israeli PM Says

The past year has been the “quietest” in at least 17 years for Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip border, with the lowest number of rockets fired into Israel from the Palestinian-ruled coastal enclave, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday. “The first year of my government was the quietest” since the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005, when Israel unilaterally evacuated settlers and pulled its armed forces out of the strip, Bennett said in televised remarks at a parliamentary security committee meeting. (In fact, fewer rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel this year than at any time since 2002, when the cross-border rocket attacks began.) “The numbers are clear: In 2019, 1,291 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel. In 2020, 176. In 2021, 3,520 rockets, and in 2022 – only six rockets, with no casualties and no injuries,” he said. “This is the result of a determined and clear policy” of aggressive counterattacks whenever Palestinians in the Gaza Strip do launch rockets or incendiary balloons into Israel, the prime minister said. In May 2021, Israel and Palestinian factions in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip saw their heaviest round of fighting since 2014. Bennett was sworn in as prime minister in June 2021.