After a weekend of violence at the sites of holy places in Jerusalem, appeasement does not seem to be on the agenda. On Monday evening, April 18, alarm sirens sounded in southern Israel as the country suffered the first rocket fire from the Gaza Strip since the beginning of January.
“A rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory and was intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system”said the Israeli army in a press release, while a projectile was damaged in the sea off Tel Aviv. “In retaliation for this attack, the fighter planes of [l’Etat hébreu] struck weapons factories of the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza”she added.
The armed Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip, for its part, claimed to have used its “air defense” in an attempt to counter these strikes. These first Israeli raids for several months in the Palestinian enclave caused no casualties, according to witnesses and security sources in Gaza.
“Congratulations to the men of the resistance who faced the fighter jets with our anti-aircraft defense”Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement, arguing that Israeli forces had struck “empty sites”.
A series of incidents
The rocket fire had not been claimed but it comes in a tense context after numerous incidents in recent weeks and violence throughout the weekend in Jerusalem.
A series of attacks in Israel – two of which were perpetrated by Palestinians in Tel Aviv – have claimed fourteen lives since March 22. Israeli incidents or operations of “counter-terrorism” in the West Bank – Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 by the Jewish state -, have made twenty-three victims among the Palestinians, including attackers on the armed forces of the Jewish state. An 18-year-old Palestinian woman, Hanan Khudur, died on Monday after being shot and wounded recently by the Israeli army in the village of Faquaa, near the city of Jenin, a stronghold of Palestinian armed factions in the West Bank.
In Jerusalem on Friday, more than 150 Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli forces at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, also considered Judaism’s first holiest site under the name Temple Mount. . On Sunday, new clashes broke out in and around this holy place that Jews had gone to visit, which was considered an affront by some Muslims. 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 then responded by bombarding the Palestinian territory of 2.3 million inhabitants, giving rise to a bloody eleven-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. Second, 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. , territory under blockade weighed down by a local unemployment rate of around 50%.
Refreshed relations between Israel and Jordan
Monday, the Islamic Jihad, the main Palestinian armed group after Hamas, but which, unlike him, 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 in a press release its leader, Ziad Al-Nakhalé. The movement has, according to Israeli intelligence, thousands of fighters and rockets in Gaza.
The recent incidents at the esplanade of the Mosques also cooled relations a little on Monday between Israel and Jordan, which summoned the Israeli charge d’affaires in Amman to ask for an end to the “illegal and provocative Israeli violations”. Jordan, bound to Israel by a peace treaty since 1994, administers the esplanade, 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 bring 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 the 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” by these tensions and that Washington was increasing its contacts with Israel, with the Palestinian Authority and with Arab countries in an attempt to curb them.
