Operation Rainbow

Area of the conflict

Date	12 May - 1 June 2004
Location	Gaza Strip
Result	Israeli withdrawal

Belligerents

Israel (IDF)

Hamas

Islamic Jihad
PRC

Commanders and leaders

Brigadier General Shmuel Zakkai

Casualties and losses

13 soldiers killed.

53-55 Palestinians killed
Combatants: 41 killed (IDF claim), 12 (Palestinians claim)
Civilians: 12 (IDF claim), 43 (Palestinians claim)

Operation Rainbow (Hebrew: Mivtza Keshet Be-Anan, מבצע קשת בענן) was an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) military operation in the southern Gaza Strip from 12–24 May 2004, involving an invasion and siege of Rafah. The operation was started after the deaths of eleven Israeli soldiers in two Palestinian attacks, in which M113 armored vehicles were attacked.

Human Rights Watch reported 59 Palestinians killed from 12–24 May, including 11 under age eighteen and 18 armed men. The IDF razed some 300 homes to expand the buffer zone along the Gaza–Egypt border, expanding it far inside the Gaza Strip. Also a zoo and at least 700 dunams (70 ha) of agricultural land were destroyed.

Israel's declared aims of Operation Rainbow were finding and destroying smuggling tunnels, targeting terrorists, and securing the Philadelphi Route by expanding the buffer zone.

In response to a repeated shelling of Israeli communities with Qassam rockets and mortar shells from Gaza, the IDF operated mainly in Rafah – to search and destroy smuggling tunnels used by militants to obtain weapons, ammunition, fugitives, cigarettes, car parts, electrical goods, foreign currency, gold, drugs, and cloth from Egypt. The IDF launched a series of armored raids on the Gaza Strip (mainly Rafah and refugee camps around Gaza). On 22 March 2004, an Israeli helicopter gunship killed Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and on 17 April, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi was killed by IDF helicopter gunship strike.

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