Operation Shield and Arrow (2023)

Operation Shield and Arrow (Magen VaHetz) was a five-day round of fighting between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, from May 9 to May 13, 2023. It opened before dawn on May 9 with simultaneous airstrikes that killed three of Islamic Jihad's most senior commanders, and it ended with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire at 10 p.m. on May 13. Like the rounds of 2019 and 2022, it was fought against Islamic Jihad alone, while Hamas stayed out. It was the last Gaza operation before October 7, 2023, and in hindsight one of the episodes that reinforced a pattern that would prove dangerously misleading.

Background: a hunger strike and a spring of tension

On May 2, 2023, Khader Adnan, a prominent Islamic Jihad figure from the West Bank, died in Israeli prison after an 87-day hunger strike in protest at his detention. Within hours rockets were fired from Gaza at southern Israel; Israel responded with limited strikes, and a short exchange ended the same day. Israeli security officials said Islamic Jihad was responsible for the fire and had acted with Iranian encouragement.

The setting was tense on several fronts. A new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, which included far-right parties, had taken office in late December 2022 and was in the midst of a deep domestic crisis over its plan to overhaul the judiciary. In the West Bank, the Israeli operations against armed groups in Jenin and Nablus had made 2022 and early 2023 the deadliest period there in many years. In April 2023 rockets had also been fired from southern Lebanon during clashes at the Al-Aqsa compound.

Five days of fighting

The opening strikes, carried out at about 2 a.m. on May 9, hit apartments in Gaza City and Rafah. They killed Jihad Ghannam, secretary of Islamic Jihad's military council; Khalil al-Bahtini, its commander in the northern Strip; and Tareq Izz al-Din, who according to Israel directed the group's activity in the West Bank from Gaza. According to Palestinian authorities, at least 13 people were killed in the opening strikes, among them the three commanders, their wives and four children. The IDF said it had targeted the commanders for the threat they posed and acknowledged that family members had been killed with them.

Islamic Jihad held its fire for more than a day before launching barrages from the afternoon of May 10. On May 11 a rocket hit an apartment building in Rehovot and killed a woman, and two days later a worker from Gaza employed in Israel was killed by a rocket in the western Negev. Israel killed three more senior commanders in the following days, among them Ahmed Abu Daqqa, deputy commander of the rocket force, and Iyad al-Hassani, head of the group's operations.

According to the IDF, 1,469 rockets were fired during the round. Of those, 291 fell inside the Gaza Strip, Iron Dome intercepted 437, and two long-range rockets were intercepted by David's Sling, the system's first operational interceptions. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 33 Palestinians were killed, including six children and three women; Israel said that at least four of them were killed by rockets that fell short inside Gaza.

Outcome and significance

Egypt mediated a ceasefire that took effect at 10 p.m. on May 13, after about 116 hours of fighting according to the IDF. Hamas did not fire during the round. According to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, it did take part in the joint operations room of the Gaza factions and threatened to expand the fighting, but it kept its forces back.

In Israel, the operation was presented as another proof of the formula that had guided Operation Black Belt and Operation Breaking Dawn: Islamic Jihad could be struck hard while Hamas, preoccupied with governing Gaza, stood aside. Five months later, on October 7, 2023, Hamas led the attack that opened the Israel-Hamas war. Hamas's restraint in the rounds of 2019 to 2023 has since been examined, in Israeli inquiries and public debate, as part of the deception and the misreading that preceded that attack.