Five days after the start of the clashes between Israel and the Islamist movement of Hamas, and as the Israeli army threatens to carry out a ground invasion, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned, Friday, May 14, that the raids on the Gaza Strip were not going to end anytime soon.
“I said we would inflict serious setbacks on Hamas and other terrorist groups (…). They are paying and will continue to pay dearly. It’s not over yet “Netanyahu said after a meeting at the defense ministry, a statement said.
Since the start of this new cycle of violence on Monday, 122 people have died in Gaza, including at least 31 children, and nearly 830 people have been injured, according to the latest report from the Palestinian health ministry, released Friday morning. In Israel, where the Iron Dome missile shield intercepted about 90% of the some 2,000 rockets fired this week from Gaza, the death toll was eight dead and hundreds wounded on Friday.
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Three open fronts and borders under tension
From now on, the conflict is no longer confined to the Gaza Strip, and three fronts are emerging. The Palestinian enclave therefore, but also the West Bank, theater of large demonstrations which turned, Friday, to clashes with the Israeli army, and the Judeo-Arab cities of Israel where Arabs and Jews are opposed, at a level of violence never reached in decades, according to the Israeli police.
In the occupied West Bank, ten Palestinians have been killed and more than 150 protesters injured, according to a report from the Palestinian Ministry of Health and the Red Crescent. Most of these Palestinians were killed by bullets fired by the Israeli army during these protests.
Three rockets were fired Friday evening from Syria into Israel, the first since the escalation of violence began. One of them fell in Syrian territory and the other two struck uninhabited areas in northern Israel, the IDF said.
Meanwhile, two Lebanese were injured by Israeli fire during a rally in southern Lebanon on the border with Israel on Friday in protest against Israeli raids on Gaza, the National Agency reported. Lebanese Information System (ANI). They got hurt “By firing two Israeli shells which fell near them after a number of young demonstrators tried to enter the border town of Metoulla”, in northern Israel, the Lebanese agency said. One of them, a member of Lebanese Hezbollah, succumbed to his injuries.
The IDF also claimed on Twitter that its tanks had “Fired warning shots at a number of rioters (…) having crossed Lebanon into Israeli territory ”. On Thursday, three rockets were fired at Israel from an area near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rachidiyé, located in southern Lebanon, but they fell in the Mediterranean.
Gaza Strip surrounded by Israeli tanks
The Israeli army surrounded, Friday morning, the Palestinian enclave, one of the theaters of the conflict which has intensified since Monday in the Middle East. Hebrew state forces carried out bombings overnight from Thursday to Friday “To inflict severe damage to tunnels” that allow fighters to move through the Gaza Strip away from Israeli cameras, the military said on Friday. Tank artillery fire that forced hundreds of Gazans to leave their homes, according to witnesses and journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP), present on the spot.
During the night, the army first announced that Israeli soldiers had entered the territory. But, two hours later, she had reconsidered her remarks by evoking “An internal communication problem”.
Since Thursday morning, tanks and other armored vehicles have been massed along the barrier separating Israel from the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. “We are ready and we continue to prepare for different scenarios”, said a little earlier Jonathan Conricus, spokesman for the army, specifying that a ground invasion of the enclave was “One of the scenarios”.
Protests in support of Palestinians in Jordan
Thousands of people took part in the biggest rallies held in Jordan in recent days in solidarity with the Palestinians in Jerusalem and Gaza on Friday. In Amman, the demonstration began after Friday prayers outside the Husseini Grand Mosque in the center of the capital.
To the cries of “Jordan salutes Arab Palestine”, or “The people want the liberation of Palestine”, protesters flying the Palestinian and Jordanian flags walked a kilometer before being stopped by a massive security roadblock.
50 kilometers further west of the capital, in Karameh, near the border with the West Bank occupied by Israel since 1967, some 3,000 people gathered in front of the monument dedicated to the Unknown Soldier. It is a symbolic place dedicated to the confrontation which had opposed during fifteen hours, in March 1968 – a few months after the Arab defeat of June 1967 -, the fighters of Fatah to the Israeli army.
UN Security Council meeting set for Sunday
Faced with the intensification of the conflict, a third emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, public this time and in the presence of Israeli and Palestinian representatives, was to be held on Friday but the United States reportedly opposed it. , according to diplomats. It was finally postponed to Sunday, at 4 p.m. (Paris time).
The Americans support the position of their Israeli ally, which refuses UN involvement, and have reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket fire from Hamas. On the other hand, they also asked the Hebrew state to do “Everything possible to avoid civilian casualties”.
As for the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, he insisted on Friday on “The urgency of a return to peace” in the Middle East, also stressing, during an interview with the Israeli Prime Minister, the “Right to defend oneself” of Israel while saying “His concern about the civilian populations in Gaza”.
