Rocket fire and air strikes keep Gaza border jumpy

By Douglas Hamilton

SDEROT, Israel (Reuters) - Israeli warplanes hit targets in Gaza before dawn on Thursday after a rocket was fired into Israel from the enclave controlled by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

The exchange was what passes for normal here in the south, nine months after the three-week Gaza war ended with cease-fire orders on both sides, but no mutually agreed truce.

Israel's military says more than 260 rockets or mortar rounds have hit Israeli territory since then, the vast majority landing in open ground. Its air force has retaliated with dozens of air strikes, mostly aimed at Gaza's smuggling tunnels into Egypt.

"This is not resolved," says Noam Bedein who runs a media centre in Sderot, a provincial town close to the Gaza Strip border and often in the firing line for rockets for a decade and particularly since Israel withdrew from the enclave in 2005.

Bedein was among a handful of Israelis who went to Geneva in July to testify to the United Nations investigation into alleged war crimes in the Dec 27-Jan 18 Gaza conflict, launched when Israel ordered its Operation Cast Lead to suppress rocket fire.

Israel refused to cooperate officially with the inquiry led by South African judge Richard Goldstone, saying it was biased from the outset. The report concluded that there was evidence of war crimes by both sides but comes down most heavily on Israel.

"This is the humanisation of terrorism," said Bedein, a former Israeli army sergeant who believes Hamas is winning the "media war" for world opinion while firing rockets from urban areas and deliberately putting Palestinian civilians at risk.

There have been no rocket casualties in Israel since the hot phase of the conflict ended. Not physically, that is. But the low-level war inflicts a psychological toll, say residents.