Hamas is testing an improved Kassam rocket that can reach the Tel Aviv area. It also resumed fire on the Western Negev Sunday morning, striking the agricultural Kibbutz Alumim, whose fields border the Gaza separation fence. No injuries or damage was reported.

The terrorist organization has been using the past several weeks of relative calm to stockpile more powerful weapons, IDF intelligence chief Yossi Beidatz said last week. “They are making a strong effort to bring in longer-range rockets, including rockets that can reach Gush Dan,” (the Hebrew term for metropolitan Tel Aviv), he said last week.

The Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv reported that Hamas has also fired two test rockets towards the Mediterranean Sea and is planning more tests.

Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) chief Yuval Diskin warned as far back as May that the reduction of Kassam rocket attacks to near zero gives a false impression that Hamas is interested in refraining from attacks.

The number of attacks has fallen dramatically since several weeks after the end of Operation Cast Lead last January. More than half a year after the counterterrorist operation, the usually anti-Israeli Human Rights Watch organization concluded, “Hamas violated the laws of war by targeting Israeli civilians and by launching rockets from populated Palestinian areas that put their own people at risk.”

Bill Van Esveld, the chief researcher on the 31-page Human Rights Watch report, added that “their intent was to kill a civilian.''