Israel Defense Forces intelligence officials confirmed on Thursday in their testimony to the investigating committee that the Qassam rockets fired at Ashkelon the day before the artillery fire on Palestinian civilians in Beit Hanun was aimed at children on their way to school in the morning, and therefore had to be disrupted.

But the committee received no answer as to why the disruption had to be effected by artillery fire rather than from the more accurate aircraft.

When Brigadier General Moshe Tamir became division commander for the Gaza front in August, he ordered artillery be limited because of the severe mistakes that often result in densely populated areas.

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Mistakes happen even with aircraft, but much less frequently, and they have had greater success in the Gaza Strip, including against Qassam rocket-launching cells.

It was reported that one cannon from the artillery battery fired 12 shells in about 16 minutes, and that the mistake was due to a failure in the electronic observation in division headquarters, resulting in a deviation of a few hundred meters. Meanwhile the Qassam fire in the area continued unabated.

In July, before the Lebanon war, 206 Qassams were fired. During the fighting in August, 54 rockets were fired, and in October, the number was back up, to 79. Qassams were fired at Sderot yesterday as well, from deeper within the open spaces in the Jabalya refugee camp.

In the future it is clear the IDF will limit the use of artillery. But if the Qassam fire persists, it is unlikely the cannons will be put into storage. There will definitely not be any unilateral disengagement from Sderot. More calls will certainly urge physical control over the area from which the Qassams are being fired, to force them to fire from farther away, as is sometimes the case now as well. That is the reason why some rockets even fall in Palestinian areas. This might also be only a partial answer, if the Palestinians manage to smuggle longer-range Katyushas into the Strip and they reach Ashdod and even further north.