From Reuters:
“Gaza conflict intensifies
with rocket barrages and air strikes”
Palestinian militants fired more
rockets into Israel's commercial heartland on Thursday as Israel kept up a
punishing bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip and massed tanks and troops on the
enclave's border. Four days of cross-border fighting showed no sign of abating,
and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the campaign "will take
more time". Israeli officials said Gaza's ruling Hamas group must be dealt
a strong deterring blow before any ceasefire. Violence has also spread to mixed
communities of Jews and Arabs in Israel, a new front in the long conflict.
Synagogues were attacked and fighting broke out on the streets of some towns,
prompting Israel's president to warn of civil war. At least 103 people have
been killed in Gaza, including 27 children, over the past four days,
Palestinian medical officials said. On Thursday alone, 49 Palestinians were
killed in the enclave, the highest single-day figure since Monday. Seven people
have been killed in Israel: a soldier patrolling the Gaza border, five Israeli
civilians, including two children, and an Indian worker, Israeli authorities
said. Worried that the region's worst hostilities in years could spiral out of
control, the United States was sending in an envoy, Hady Amr. Truce efforts by
Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations had yet to deliver a sign of progress. read
more U.S. President Joe Biden called on Thursday for a de-escalation of the
violence, saying he wanted to see a significant reduction in rocket attacks.
Militants fired rocket salvoes at
Tel Aviv and surrounding towns with the Iron Dome anti-missile system
intercepting many of them. Communities near the Gaza border and the southern
desert city of Beersheba were also targeted. Five Israelis were wounded by a
rocket that hit a building near Tel Aviv on Thursday. Three rockets were also
fired from Lebanon towards Israel but landed in the Mediterranean Sea, the
military said. It appeared to be a show of solidarity with Gaza by Palestinian
groups in Lebanon rather than the start of any offensive. In Gaza, Israeli
warplanes struck a six-storey residential building that it said belonged to
Hamas. Netanyahu said Israel has struck a total of close to 1,000 militant
targets in the territory. Israeli aircraft also attacked a Hamas intelligence
headquarters and four apartments belonging to senior commanders from the group,
the military said, adding that the homes were used for planning and directing
strikes on Israel.
Diplomats said the United States,
a close ally of Israel, objected to a request by China, Norway and Tunisia for
a public, virtual meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday to discuss the
violence. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters such a meeting
would be better next week to allow time for diplomacy in hopes of achieving a
de-escalation. read more Standing beside a Gaza road damaged in Israeli air
strikes, Assad Karam, 20, a construction worker, said: "We are facing
Israel and COVID-19. We are in between two enemies." In Tel Aviv, Yishai
Levy, an Israeli singer, pointed at shrapnel that came down on a sidewalk
outside his home. "I want to tell Israeli soldiers and the government,
don't stop until you finish the job," he said on YNet television. Israel
launched its offensive after Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in
retaliation for Israeli police clashes with Palestinians near al-Aqsa mosque in
East Jerusalem during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. A number of foreign
airlines have cancelled flights to Israel because of the unrest.
'DISRUPTING' HAMAS Brigadier-General
Hidai Zilberman, the Israeli military's chief spokesman, said attacks on
militants' rocket production and launching sites were "disrupting Hamas'
activities", but still not to the point of stopping the barrages. "It
is more difficult for them, but we have to say in fairness that Hamas is an
organised group, one that has the capability to continue to fire for several
more days at the places it has been targeting in Israel," he said on
Israeli Channel 12 TV. He said between 80 and 90 militants had been
killed in Israeli attacks. Zilberman said Israel was "building up
forces on the Gaza border", a deployment that has raised speculation about
a possible ground invasion, a move that would recall similar incursions during
Israel-Gaza wars in 2014 and in 2009. Israeli military affairs
correspondents, who are briefed regularly by the armed forces, have said
however that a major ground operation is unlikely, citing high casualties among
the risks. Hamas armed wing spokesman Abu Ubaida responded to the troop
buildup with defiance, urging Palestinians to rise up. "Mass up as
you wish, from the sea, land and sky. We have prepared for your kinds of deaths
that would make you curse yourselves," he said.
FOREIGN APPEALS So far
some 1,750 rockets have been fired at Israel, of which 300 fell short in the
Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said. The U.N. agency for Palestinian
refugees, UNRWA, said two of its schools were hit on Tuesday and Wednesday
"within the context of air strikes by Israel", and that at least 29
classrooms were damaged. School is in recess in Gaza, and classes have
also been suspended in many parts of Israel, including in one town where an
empty school was hit by a rocket on Tuesday. British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson called for an "urgent de-escalation" of violence and French
President Emmanuel Macron urged a "definite reset" of long-frozen
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. read more Russian President Vladimir
Putin and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also appealed for
an end to the fighting. The hostilities have fuelled tension between
Israeli Jews and the country's 21% Arab minority who live alongside them in
some communities. Jewish and Arab groups attacked people and damaged
shops, hotels and cars overnight. In Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv, dozens of Jews
beat and kicked a man thought to be an Arab as he lay on the ground. One
person was shot and badly wounded by Arabs in the town of Lod, where
authorities imposed a curfew, and over 150 arrests were made in Lod and Arab
towns in northern Israel, police said. read more Israeli President
Reuven Rivlin called for an end to "this madness". Although
the latest unrest in Jerusalem was the immediate trigger for hostilities,
Palestinians are frustrated by setbacks to their aspirations for an independent
state in recent years, including Washington's recognition of disputed Jerusalem
as Israel's capital. On the Israeli political front, Netanyahu's chances to
remain in power after an inconclusive March 23 election appeared to improve
significantly after his main rival, centrist Yair Lapid, suffered a major
setback in efforts to form a government.
^ I only hope that Hamas will
stop firing missiles into Israel (which would also mean Israel will stop
retaliating with missiles to Gaza.) It is disheartening, though, to see so many
Anti-Semites protesting for Hamas and its terrorism around the world. ^
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