Co-ordinated rocket salvoes suggest Israel’s old enemies are reuniting

IN JUST FIVE days, starting on April 5th, by rockets launched from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. In all the cases, the trigger was ostensibly clashes between Israeli police forces and Palestinians in the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. But the fact that rockets were launched from so many sites points to co-ordination among more groups than just the Palestinian militant organisations that actually fired the rockets.Little goes on in southern Lebanon, from where the largest of the rocket salvoes was fired on April 6th, without the approval of the Hizbullah, an Iran-backed Shia militia. That was underscored on April 9th by a meeting in Beirut between Hizbullah’s secretary-general and leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. Likewise, the launching site on the Golan Heights in Syria is in an area where both Hizbullah and the Iranian expeditionary Quds Force are known to operate, with the blessing of another Iranian client, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. The Quds Force’s Iranian commander, Ismail Qaani, happened to be visiting Damascus, Syria’s capital, at the time.