The Israeli military carried out the first airstrikes in months on the Gaza Strip early Tuesday in retaliation for a rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave, a sign that local tensions show no sign of easing after a weekend of violence at the holy places in Jerusalem.
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On Monday evening, the alarm sirens sounded in southern Israel for the first rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into Israel since early January as a projectile crashed into the sea off the Tel- Aviv.
“A rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory and was intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Then, early Tuesday, the Israeli air force said it had bombed a Hamas weapons site, an armed Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip, in retaliation for firing rockets from this territory.
Hamas claimed to have used its “anti-aircraft defense” to try to counter its strikes which caused no casualties, according to witnesses and security sources in Gaza.
The rocket launch had not been claimed, but it comes after a series of attacks in Israel, two of which were carried out by Palestinians in Tel Aviv, “counterterrorism” operations in the occupied West Bank, and a weekend of tension on the holy sites in Jerusalem.
These attacks have claimed 14 lives since March 22 in Israel. And 23 Palestinians, including assailants, were killed in Israeli incidents or operations in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 by the Jewish state.
An 18-year-old Palestinian woman, Hanan Khudur, died on Monday after being shot and wounded by the Israeli army last week in the village of Faquaa, near the city of Jenin, a stronghold of Palestinian armed factions in the West Bank.
In Jerusalem, more than 150 Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli forces on Friday at the Jerusalem Mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site, also considered Judaism’s first holiest site by the name of the Temple Mount. .
Sunday, new clashes had broken out in and around this holy place that Jews had gone to visit, which was considered an affront by some Muslims. And young Palestinians were arrested the same day after throwing stones at Israeli civilian buses near the scene.
Last year, clashes in Jerusalem during the same period of the year led Hamas to launch salvoes of rockets from Gaza towards Israel, which responded by bombarding this Palestinian territory of 2.3 million inhabitants, giving rise to to a deadly 11-day war.
Israeli security sources and analysts have repeated in recent weeks that Hamas, which has welcomed recent attacks in Israel, does not want a war this year citing mainly two reasons.
First, the movement’s military capabilities were affected by the May 2021 war.
And secondly because in the event of a conflict, the new Israeli government risks suspending the thousands of work permits granted in recent months to workers in Gaza, a territory under blockade weighed down by a local unemployment rate of around 50%.
On Monday, Islamic Jihad, the main Palestinian armed Islamist group after Hamas, but which unlike it does not administer the Gaza Strip, threatened a new military escalation.
“We can no longer remain silent about what is happening in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank,” said Ziad al-Nakhale, the leader of Islamic Jihad, whose movement has thousands of fighters and soldiers according to Israeli intelligence. rockets in Gaza.
The recent incidents at the Al-Aqsa Mosque also dampened relations between Israel and Jordan on Monday, which summoned the Israeli charge d’affaires in Amman to demand an end to the “illegal and provocative Israeli violations” in Israel. esplanade of the Mosques.
Jordan, bound to Israel by a peace treaty since 1994, administers the esplanade of the Mosques, where the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock are located, but access to this place is controlled by Israel.
This summons “harms efforts to restore calm to Jerusalem”, retorted the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Statements accusing Israel of the violence that is directed against us are serious and unacceptable (…) it is a reward for those who stir up violence”, added Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, at the head of a coalition bringing together among others the right and an Arab party and which is weakened by recent events.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday evening that the United States was “greatly concerned” about these tensions and that Washington was increasing contacts with Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Arab countries in an attempt to resolve them. to curb.
Reference-www.tvanouvelles.ca