A/HRC/20/32 range of Gaza rocket and mortar fire, a situation which, although rarely resulting in Israeli casualties, definitely spreads acute fear among the general population. What is not reasonable, however, is to ignore the far more insecure, and in fact physically perilous, existence that has been inflicted upon the 1.5 million Gazans who have been living within the confines of a military blockade for more than five years, or to treat as a mere statistic the circumstances of the numerous Palestinians killed or wounded by Israeli military attacks and who die unnecessarily because of restrictions on travel or restrictions on medical services or supplies imposed by Israel. Unlike the Israelis, the Palestinians enduring such vulnerabilities have no ―Iron Dome‖ anti-missile system to offer the population some measure of protection or militarily relevant retaliatory capabilities. The most recent exchange of fire across the Israel/Gaza border shows this vast disparity: 25 Palestinians killed, including several children, with no serious Israeli casualties. What is notably unusual, even gross, is that a sport-like, score-keeping approach has become a popular feature of Israeli media when its military launches attacks against Gaza. 12 19. The recent upsurge of violence by Israel in Gaza is illustrative of a pattern that has been repeated on several occasions, generating fear and anxiety on both sides of the border. In the above-mentioned instance, relative calm in cross-border relations had existed for several months. It was interrupted from time to time, principally by Israeli border security personnel shooting Palestinians who strayed into the broad buffer zone enforced by Israel on the territory of the Gaza Strip, which restricts the use of approximately 29 per cent of the land mass in Gaza.13 This calm was broken on 9 March 2012 by the targeted killing of Zoher el-Keisi, Secretary-General of the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza, who was alleged, although without any show of evidence, to be planning ―a terrorist incident‖. What followed was the predictable escalation: in response to the attack by Israel, approximately one hundred rockets were fired at Israel, many of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system; most others fell harmlessly, except for several rockets that did some damage to a school in the Beer Sheba area and wounded eight Israelis. The Israel Air Force responded with strikes killing 16 Palestinians alleged to be militants and several others. Palestinian groups beyond the direct control of the de facto authorities of Gaza, namely the Popular Resistance Committees and the Islamic Jihad, responded with several hundred more rockets, and this provoked further retaliatory raids by Israel that killed and wounded several dozen Palestinians. Throughout the several days of attacks the de facto authorities in Gaza repeatedly indicated their readiness to restore the ceasefire, which they have consistently maintained, with the exception of seeming to allow retaliation in response to targeted killings by Israel. 20. This renewed violence has been described by Israeli commentators as ―planned escalation‖ with the intention of testing the new Iron Dome anti-missile system under battlefield conditions, and possibly to thwart some future attack launched by Palestinian militants from across the border in the northern Sinai region of Egypt. Roni Shaked described the ―nature of the vicious terror circle‖ as follows in the largest Israeli daily, Yedioth Ahronoth: ―targeted killing, retaliatory rocket attack, Israeli response, revenge reprisal, and so on and so forth.‖ 14 Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Yaakov Katz, with apparent access to official Israeli sources, called attention to an attack of a few months ago that killed eight Israeli soldiers near the Egyptian border, and claimed that this attack last 12 13 14 10 For example, on Channel 10 in Israel, a graphic scoreboard was broadcasted depicting the ―score‖ of killings as 25 Palestinians against zero Israelis. Information received during the mission in February 2012. Roni Shaked, ―Targeted-killing policy is backfiring on Israel,‖ Yedioth Ahronoth, 11 March 2012, translation available from www.al-monitor.com/pulse/contents/articles/security/01/03/targetedkillings-are-no-longer.html.