Will Israel's New Gulf Friends Get Its State-of-art Laser Defense System?

About a year ago, during Operation Guardian of the Walls, the 11-day war between Israel and Gaza, an amazing photograph was published: against a black sky, a volley of rockets fired from Gaza can be seen, and opposite them dozens of rockets fired by Iron Dome batteries trying to intercept them over Ashkelon. The photo captured for posterity a technological marvel: Iron Dome, whose development was completed 10 years earlier, is successful in intercepting the vast majority (90 percent) of rockets aimed at built-up areas in Israel. This multilayered system of defense, which was put in place with great labor over the course of more than two decades, affords the population in Israel’s south reasonable protection against the threat of rockets from Gaza. The small number of casualties in Israel also allows the political decision-makers to adopt an approach of limited response, and helps prevent large-scale operations in the Gaza Strip that would carry high loss of life.