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Israel launched airstrikes in Gaza on Friday in response to militant rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave as tensions escalate following the deadliest military incursion into the occupied West Bank in years.
“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip,” an army statement read.
Security sources in Gaza, controlled by Hamas Islamists, told AFP there had been 15 attacks on militant sites, with no injuries reported.
The Israeli army said two initial rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel around midnight. Shortly after Israel launched retaliatory strikes several hours later, three more rockets were fired from the strip, the army said. Then another round of air-raid sirens sounded in southern Israel.
It was the first such attack from Hamas-ruled territory since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power at the head of a far-right government that has promised a hard line against Palestinian militancy.
Israeli forces fire tear gas to disperse Palestinian protesters protesting against the expropriation of Palestinian land at the northern entrance to the city of Ramallah near the Jewish settlement of Beit El in the occupied West Bank on January 26, 2023.
Most of the rockets from Gaza were intercepted by Israel’s air defense system, the army said, adding that one landed in an open area and another fell inside Gaza.
No group has claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, but Hamas and Islamic Jihad had vowed to respond to Thursday’s army raid on Jenin that killed nine Palestinians.
Israel described the raid as a “counterterrorism” operation.
Jenin refugee camp raid and rocket fire raise risk of major outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, pose a test for Israel’s new hardline government and cast a shadow over expected trip for Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, to the region next week.
Raising the stakes, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said it would stop ties its security forces maintain with Israel in a shared effort to contain Islamic militants.
Previous threats have been short-lived, partly because of the benefits the authority enjoys from the relationship and also because of US and Israeli pressure to maintain it.
The Palestinian Authority already has limited control over scattered West Bank enclaves and almost none over militant strongholds such as the Jenin camp. But the announcement could pave the way for Israel to step up operations it says are necessary to prevent attacks.
Violent escalations in the West Bank have previously triggered retaliatory rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians burn tires and wave the national flag during a protest against the Israeli military attack in the West Bank city of Jenin, on January 26, 2023.
Israeli forces in the West Bank and on the Gaza border went on high alert.
Palestinians filled the streets, chanting in solidarity with Jenin, and President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning.
In the refugee camp, residents dug a mass grave for the dead.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said Abbas had decided to cut security coordination “in light of the repeated aggression against our people and the undermining of signed agreements,” referring to the commitments of the peace process in Oslo in the 1990s. He also said that the Palestinians planned to file complaints with the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court and other international bodies.
The Palestinian Authority last cut security coordination with Israel in 2020, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push to annex the occupied West Bank, making a future Palestinian state all but impossible.
But six months later, the Palestinian Authority resumed cooperation, signaling the financial importance of the relationship and Palestinian relief over the election of US President Joe Biden.
There have been no serious peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in over a decade.
The shooting on Thursday that left nine dead and 20 wounded broke out when the Israeli army carried out a rare daytime operation in the Jenin camp that it said was aimed at preventing an imminent attack on the Israelis.
The camp, where the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group has a major foothold, has been the focus of Israeli arrest raids almost every night.
Hamas’s armed wing claimed four of the dead as members, while Islamic Jihad said three others belonged to the group.
An earlier statement from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia loosely affiliated with Abbas’s secular Fatah party, claimed one of the dead was a fighter named Izz al-Din Salahat, but it was unclear if he was among those seven. militants.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the slain 61-year-old woman as Magda Obaid, and the Israeli army said it was investigating reports of her death.
The Israeli army circulated aerial video it said was taken during the battle, showing what appeared to be Palestinians on rooftops throwing rocks and firebombs at Israeli forces below.
At least one Palestinian can be seen opening fire from a rooftop.
Later that day, Israeli forces shot dead a 22-year-old, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, as Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli troops north of Jerusalem to protest Thursday’s raid.
Israel’s paramilitary Border Police said they opened fire on the Palestinians who fired fireworks at them at point-blank range.
Tensions have soared since Israel stepped up raids on the West Bank last spring, following a series of Palestinian attacks.
The conflict only escalated this month, when Israel’s far-right government took office and vowed to take a hard line against the Palestinians.
Israel’s new national security minister, far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is seeking to grant legal immunity to Israeli soldiers who shoot Palestinians, posted a video of himself smiling triumphantly and congratulating security forces. The raid left a trail of destruction in Jenin.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem said Thursday marked the bloodiest incursion into Judea and Samaria since 2002, at the height of an intense wave of violence known as the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, that left scars still visible. in Jenin.
UN Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland said he was “deeply alarmed and saddened” by the violence.
The condemnations came from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Turkey, which recently restored full diplomatic relations with Israel, as well as from neighboring Jordan.
Saudi Arabia criticized the raid, saying it rejected “serious violations of international law by the Israeli occupying forces.” Qatar, Kuwait and Oman added sentences.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem last year, making 2022 the deadliest in those territories since 2004, according to B’Tselem. So far this year, 30 Palestinians have been killed. Israel says most of the dead were militants.
But young people who protested against the incursions and others not involved in the clashes have also been killed.
Israel says its raids are aimed at dismantling militant networks and thwarting attacks.
The Palestinians say they are further entrenching Israel’s 55-year indefinite occupation of the West Bank, which Israel captured along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war.
The Palestinians claim those territories for their longed-for state.
Israel has established dozens of settlements in the West Bank that are now home to 500,000 people.
The Palestinians and much of the international community view the settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace, even as talks to end the conflict have been moribund for more than a decade.