Middle East Desk
Report
GAZA: Israel launched airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, just hours after a right-wing march took place in occupied East Jerusalem. It was the first offensive campaign against the Palestinian enclave since a major conflict in May in which hundreds were killed.
The strikes were also the first under the new coalition government headed by Naftali Bennett, who took over on Sunday after ousting former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And they come as more than a thousand ultranationalist demonstrators bearing Israeli flags poured into Jerusalem’s flashpoint Old City on Tuesday, with scores of police deployed and international monitors urging calm.
According to Palestinian sources, Israel’s air force targeted at least one site east of Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip, which is home to some 2 million people.
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) said the offensive was in response to the “arson balloons” and that its “fighter jets struck military compounds belonging to the Hamas.”, the IDF added that “facilities and meeting sites for terrorist operatives” in Khan Yunis were targeted. There was no indication of casualties so far. The IDF added that it was “prepared for any scenario, including a resumption of hostilities, in the face of continuing terrorist activities from the Gaza Strip.”
A spokesperson for Palestinian resistance group Hamas, which rules in Gaza, confirmed the Israeli attacks and told Reuters news agency that Palestinians would continue to pursue their “brave resistance and defend their rights and sacred sites” in Jerusalem. But analysts suggested Hamas refrained from firing rockets around the march and after the Israeli strikes to avoid an escalation in Gaza, which was devastated by May’s aerial bombardment.
“It (the cease-fire) is very fragile. The current calm may give the Egyptians a chance to try and cement it,” said Talal Okal, an analyst in Gaza. Israel’s Army Radio reported that Israel had informed Egyptian mediators that direct Hamas involvement in the balloon launch would imperil long-term truce talks. Israeli officials did not immediately confirm the report.
The violence is the first flare-up between Israel and Hamas since a cease-fire came into place in May, ending 11 days of heavy fighting that killed more than 260 Palestinians, including 69 children, the Gaza authorities said.
In annexed East Jerusalem, more than 1,000 people took to the streets in a delayed and controversial march by nationalist and far-right activists. Scores of right-wing nationalists paraded through the Damascus Gate of the Old City. Palestinians saw the late afternoon march, which was set to pass through the Muslim quarter of the Old City, as a provocation. Fatah and Hamas, the two largest Palestinian organizations, issued a call for a “day of rage.”
The U.S. and U.N. had called for restraint before the march, which Bennett’s new administration had authorized. With tensions high, Israeli police were deployed in heavy numbers, blocking roads and firing stun grenades and foam-tipped bullets to remove Palestinians from the main route. Israel police forcibly pushed dozens of Palestinians from outside the Old City’s Damascus Gate.
