Long-range rocket test reported in Gaza

JERUSALEM — Hamas militants in Gaza recently test-fired a rocket that flew 37 miles into the sea, Israel's military-intelligence chief said here on Tuesday, a development that would put the environs of Tel Aviv within range and would attest to the success of Hamas in rebuilding and even improving its military abilities since Israel's devastating three-week offensive in Gaza last winter.

A spokesman for Hamas denied there had been any such launch and said the Israeli report was timed to divert international attention from accusations that Israel had committed war crimes.

The stated purpose of the Israeli assault on Gaza was to halt incessant rocket fire into southern Israel by striking at the infrastructure of Hamas, the Islamic group that has controlled the Palestinian coastal strip since 2007. Israel came under intense international scrutiny and censure after hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in the war.

The military-intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, told the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday that Hamas had fully replenished and even improved its stock of rockets, according to an official who attended the meeting.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity about a closed-door meeting, said it was not clear whether the rocket that was tested had been smuggled into Gaza or was locally produced, but he said Yadlin had asserted that those who fired it must have received training abroad, in Syria or Iran.

Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, said the Israeli intelligence chief's report was a "fabrication" that "reflects the depth of the crisis" in Israel after a U.N. report found evidence of possible war crimes committed by the Israeli army — and Hamas militants — during the Gaza war.

The U.N. General Assembly was scheduled today to consider the 575-page report, written by a committee led by the respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone. Israel has rejected the report, saying it is one-sided and does not take into account Israel's right to self-defense. Most rockets fired out of Gaza over the past eight years have been locally made and crude, with ranges of a few miles. Before and during the war, Hamas also fired rockets with ranges of about 25 miles that struck large, southern Israeli population centers including Beersheba and the port city of Ashdod.

Israeli officials say that Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese organization backed by Syria and Iran, has tripled its stock of rockets since its 2006 war with Israel and now has up to 40,000 rockets, including a number that threaten Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial and cultural hub in the crowded coastal plain.

Israeli government minister Zeev Binyamin Begin recently tried to make the threat more understandable to the U.S., telling reporters the situation with Hezbollah was like having "40,000 rockets in northern Mexico in the hands of terrorists who say their allegiance lies with Venezuela."