The Israeli military tested lasted week a newly-manufactured interceptive missile, designed to block Palestinian homemade shells being fired by Palestinian resistance groups from Gaza onto nearby Israeli towns, Israel's channel 10 reported Sunday night. The channel, which screened footages of the rocket, confirmed the test took place in southern Israel, where homemade shells mostly land. The TV also reported that army General Dani Gholeit, commissioned with the military researches, as saying " such a new defense system can work effectively by the year 2010". Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, followed up on January22 work progress at the Israeli military firm of Rafaiel, with regard to the Israeli government's demand for such a defense system, the government had earlier ordered the firm with. The interceptive missile should block homemade shells, ranging from 4 to 70 kilometers, the Israeli government's demand states. Olmert had also urged acceleration of the manufacture in order for the Israeli army to deploy the system at areas, adjacent to the coastal territory. In the summer of 2006, the Israeli defense systems failed to intercept thousands of Katyusha rockets, the Lebanese Islamist party of Hizbullah, fired towards northern Israel during the second Israeli war on Lebanon then. Over the past 7 years, Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza have developed crudely-produced homemade shells, which have killed approximately 14 Israelis and wounded dozens of others.
