Pros and Cons of Putting Static HTML into /public_html

[eluser]Dr. Seuss[/eluser]
I have a similar problem: I have placed my static html in a peer directory, like so:

|
+ system
+ static
+ user_guide
.htaccess
index.php

...and have placed this in my .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^([a-z]+)\.html$ /static/$1.html
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9])\.gif$ /static/images/$1.gif

My problem seems to be that I cannot get my images to display within the pages. Any ideas as to what I am doing wrong?