Rocket barrage from Gaza (file)
Rocket barrage from Gaza (file)Reuters

Just a little over a month after the August 26 ceasefire with Israel that ended Hamas's terror war and the 50-day Operation Protective Edge, terrorists in Gaza fired a rocket into the sea Friday morning.

No one was wounded by the projectile, which Walla! speculates  was part of a missile test to check the capabilities of the terror group's lethal arsenal.

The last projectile to leave Gaza, if the two terrorist infiltration attempts into Israel last month aren't counted, was a mortar round fired on the Eshkol region by terrorists in mid-September. 

Hamas, which breached numerous ceasefires during the operation in July and August, denied responsibility for the mortar fire and claimed to have arrested those responsible.

The rocket launch Friday comes the same day that IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz gave his first official interview since the end of the operation. In that interview, Gantz appraised that the IDF destroyed "most of their rocket production industry."

If the rocket is a "test" as expected, it may indicate that industry is kicking back into life even as Hamas approaches renewed Cairo truce talks with Israel in the last week of October. Hamas has also received large quantities of rockets from Iran, among other suppliers.

The reported rocket test brings to mind Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman's (Yisrael Beytenu) words after the end of the operation, in which he noted Hamas's increase in military strength between Operations Cast Lead (2008-2009), Pillar of Defense (2012) and the current campaign.

"If the range of the rockets in the first operation was 15 kilometers towards Sderot, in Pillar of Defense they already reached the edges of Tel Aviv and Rishon Letzion. Now the rockets have already gone past Hadera," said Liberman, referring to a northern town near Haifa located 165 kilometers (102 miles) from Gaza that was targeted by Hamas in the operation.