Middle East Desk Report
GAZA/JERUSALEM: Israel said on Wednesday it was not setting a timeframe for an end to hostilities with Gaza as its military pounded the Palestinian enclave with air strikes and Hamas militants unleashed new cross-border rocket attacks.
Palestinian medical officials said 219 people had now been killed in 10 days of aerial bombardments which have destroyed roads, buildings and other infrastructure, and worsened the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Israeli authorities put the death toll at 12 in Israel, where repeated rocket attacks have caused panic and sent people rushing into shelters. Regional and US-led diplomatic efforts to secure a cease-fire have intensified but so far failed. Israel fired artillery at targets in Lebanon after four rockets were launched towards Israel from Lebanese territory on Wednesday, the Israeli military said, and a security source said Hezbollah was not involved.
It was the third incident of rocket fire from Lebanon since hostilities between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza flared up on May 10. Israel’s missile defences intercepted one of the projectiles and “the rest most likely fell in open areas”, the military said. The rockets caused air raid sirens to blare near the northern Israeli city of Haifa and areas to the east. Security sources in Lebanon confirmed that four rockets had been launched towards Israel from Seddiqine, a village in the region of Lebanon’s southern coastal city of Tyre. One security source said militant group Hezbollah, which has sway in southern Lebanon, had not been involved in the launches, and that the group was trying to determine the source of the rockets. There were no reports of damage on either side.
Earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made no mention of any halt to the fighting in public remarks at a briefing to foreign ambassadors to Israel, saying his country was engaged in “forceful deterrence” to prevent future conflict with Hamas.
In remarks reported by Israeli media from a closed question-and-answer session, he was quoted as saying: “We’re not standing with a stopwatch. We want to achieve the goals of the operation. Previous operations lasted a long time so it is not possible to set a timeframe.”
In a 25-minute attack overnight, Israel bombarded targets including what its military said were tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip used by Hamas, the Islamist group that governs Gaza. Some 50 rockets were fired from the enclave, the Israeli military said, with sirens sounding in the coastal city of Ashdod, south of Tel Aviv, and in areas closer to the Gaza border. There were no reports of injuries or damage overnight but days of rocket fire have unsettled many Israelis.
Nearly 450 buildings in densely populated Gaza have been destroyed or badly damaged, including six hospitals and nine primary-care health centers, and more than 52,000 Palestinians have been displaced, the UN humanitarian agency said. The damage has left large craters and piles of rubble across the coastal enclave, and deepened long-running concerns about living conditions in Gaza.
“Whoever wants to learn about the humanity of the (Israelis) should come to the Gaza Strip and look at the houses that got destroyed on top of those who lived in them,” said university lecturer Ahmed Al-Astal, standing by the rubble of his house in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
He said there had been no warning before his home was destroyed in an air strike before dawn. Israel, which blames the latest hostilities on Hamas, says it issues warnings to evacuate buildings that are to be fired on and that it attacks only what it regards as military targets.
“We try to target those who target us. With great precision,” Netanyahu told the foreign envoys. “As surgical an operation as it is, even in a surgical room in a hospital you don’t have the ability to prevent collateral damage around effected tissues. Even then you can’t. And certainly in a military operation you cannot.”
President Joe Biden made clear in a call Wednesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he expected “significant de-escalation” by day’s end. Biden asked Netanyahu to move “toward the path to a cease-fire,” according to a White House description of their conversation.
Hamas began firing rockets nine days ago in retaliation for what it said were Israeli rights abuses against Palestinians in Jerusalem during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The rocket attacks followed Israeli security police clashes with worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and a court case by Israeli settlers to evict Palestinians from a neighborhood in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.
The hostilities are the most serious between Hamas and Israel in years, and, in a departure from previous Gaza conflicts, have helped fuel street violence in Israeli cities between Jews and Arabs.
