Global Courant 2023-05-12 16:17:24
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Palestinian militants fired rockets into Jerusalem on Friday, further escalating the most violent confrontation in months between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip, despite efforts to negotiate a ceasefire.
The burst of rocket fire from Gaza sent warning sirens to the north of the disputed capital of Jerusalem – about 77 kilometers from the Gaza border – breaking a 12-hour silence that had raised hopes that regional powers could soon mediate a settlement. ceasefire.
There were no immediate reports of casualties on either side on Friday. The fighting, which began Tuesday, between Israel and Islamic Jihad — the second largest militant group in Gaza after Hamas rulers in the area — has killed 31 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including women and children, and a 70- year-old man in the Gaza Strip. central Israel.
A missile struck an open field in the Israeli settlement of Bat Ayin in South Jerusalem, said Josh Hasten, a spokesman for the area. Dull thumps could be heard in the city, home to important sites sacred to Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
Videos showed Israelis jumping out of their cars and crouching under the highway rails as sirens blared. Residents of nearby settlements reported hearing explosions and seeing black smoke billowing from the hills following an apparent missile interception.
“The bombing of Jerusalem sends a message,” Islamic Jihad said in a statement. “What is happening in Jerusalem is not separate from Gaza.”
In response, the Israeli military said its warplanes hit four Islamic Jihad military posts and a mortar grenade launcher in the Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he was conducting a security assessment. The Israeli military urged those within 40 kilometers (25 miles) of the Gaza border to stay close to bomb shelters and limit public gatherings to Saturday night.
Sirens near Jerusalem brought some residents back to the spring of 2021, when Hamas fired rockets at the city, helping to spark a bloody 11-day Gaza war. At the time, the militant group cited a provocative far-right march through Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods as one of the reasons for its rocket fire, along with the expulsion of Palestinians from the east of the city.
Israeli police said they will host the same Jewish ultra-nationalist parade — intended to celebrate Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem — on Thursday.
Since Tuesday, Israeli strikes have killed five leading Islamic Jihad figures and hit at least 215 targets in Gaza, including rocket and mortar launch sites and militants preparing to use them. Islamic Jihad has retaliated with nearly 900 rockets fired into densely populated parts of Israel.
Israeli bombs and shells destroyed 47 housing units and damaged 19 so badly they were uninhabitable, leaving 165 Palestinians homeless, Gaza’s housing ministry reported. In addition, nearly 300 homes suffered some damage.
Palestinians examined the wreckage left by the fighting on Friday.
“The dream we built for our children, for our sons, has ended,” said Belal Bashir, a Palestinian living in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah whose childhood home was reduced to rubble by an airstrike late Thursday. was traced. He, his young daughters and two-week-old son would have been killed in the thunderous explosion had they not run out when they heard screams, he said.
“We were shocked that our home was targeted,” he added as he pulled his children’s dolls and blankets out of a gaping bomb crater.
At least 31 Palestinians, including seven children and four women, have been killed in the Gaza Strip, according to the UN Humanitarian Aid Office. At least three of the children were killed by misfired Palestinian rockets, according to the Israeli army and the Palestinian Center for Rights. More than 90 Palestinians have been injured, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
The civilian deaths have sparked condemnation from the Arab world and concern from the United States and Europe. In the past four wars against Hamas, Israel has repeatedly faced war crimes charges over its high civilian death toll and use of heavy weapons against the overcrowded enclave. Israel, in turn, claims that Palestinian militant groups use civilians as human shields by fighting in their midst.
Hamas, the de facto civilian government with an army of some 30,000 in Gaza, has been trying to maintain the ceasefire with Israel while preventing the appalling living conditions in the blockaded enclave from spiraling since a devastating 11-day war in Gaza. 2021 in which more than 260 people died. Palestinians. The group, which took control of Gaza in 2007, has weathered this round of fighting – as has a similar outbreak of violence last summer. In a sign of restraint, Israel has limited its airstrikes to Islamic Jihad targets.
Both sides appeared on the brink of a ceasefire earlier this week. Hamas officials told local media on Friday that Egypt was stepping up its diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting. But Israel’s public broadcaster Kan reported that Israeli officials had withdrawn from talks in Egypt after Islamic Jihad fired rockets at Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on the reports.
Meanwhile, figures from Islamic Jihad are sending mixed signals about the negotiations. Senior official Ihsan Attaya complained early Friday that the mediators “have not been able to give us any guarantees”. One sticking point is Islamic Jihad’s demands that Israel stop its policy of targeted killings, Attaya said.
In Cairo, Mohamad al-Hindi, member of the political bureau of Islamic Jihad, tried to work out the details of a possible ceasefire. He told Palestinian media that he hoped both sides would “reach a ceasefire agreement and honor it today.” But the ongoing gunfight hours later seemed to undermine his optimism.
This week’s fighting began when Israel launched simultaneous airstrikes on Tuesday that killed three Islamic Jihad commanders along with some of their wives and children as they slept in their homes. Israel said it was retaliating for a barrage of rockets launched last week by Islamic Jihad following the death of one of its West Bank members, Khader Adnan, following an 87-day hunger strike while in Israeli custody.
The airstrikes and rockets have shifted the focus of the long-running conflict to Gaza after months of escalating violence in the occupied West Bank under Israel’s most right-wing government in history.
Israel has been making arrests almost nightly in the West Bank, killing 109 Palestinians so far this year — the highest death toll in two decades. At least half of the dead are linked to militant groups, according to a count by The Associated Press. At least 20 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks on Israelis during that time.
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DeBre reported from Jerusalem
