Jerusalem, May 12 (EFE).-Israel is intensifying its airstrikes on Gaza in retaliation against rocket fire from the enclave, prime minister Benjamín Netanyahu said on Wednesday. His comments came after an operation by Israeli security and intelligence forces killed several top leaders of militias affiliated to Hamas, the Islamist movement that governs the Gaza Strip.
“We eliminated senior Hamas commanders and this is just the beginning,” Netanyahu said.
Israel “will respond, and we are responding, with increasing force,” he said at Holon’s Wolfson medical center where he visited Israelis who have been wounded by rocket fire from Gaza. Hamas’ militias confirmed the killing of Bassem Issa, the commander of its Gaza City Brigade, who has been in charge of directing the rocket attacks on Israel from the enclave.
Hamas also confirmed the deaths of three other high-ranked militants in airstrikes. The Israeli army said it had carried out a “complex operation” in cooperation with the intelligence services to simultaneously eliminate several Hamas leaders in Gaza City and Khan Yunis.
Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum said that it would not accept a ceasefire “until the attacks stop in Jerusalem and the airstrikes on the Gaza strip stop”. At least 48 people, including 14 children and three women, have been killed in the Israeli airstrikes, the Gazan health ministry said on Wednesday. More than 300 people have been wounded.
Israeli defense officials said militants in Gaza fired an anti-tank missile into Israel on Wednesday morning, which killed one person and wounded two, one of whom is in a serious condition. A total of six people — including an Indian citizen — have died in Israel since the flare-up of violence on Monday.
Two of those deaths came in Lod, a city with mixed Jewish and Israeli Arab populations that has been placed under a state of emergency following violent riots that saw hundreds of arrests and damaged property, including synagogues. Israel says it has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in retaliation for the hundreds of rockets that have been fired from the Gaza Strip. A barrage of bombs in the early hours of Wednesday morning struck buildings in the western part of Gaza City that house key Hamas security targets.
The IDF has said it is trying to reduce “collateral damage” and “minimize” civilian casualties in Gaza. A military spokesman said that Israeli forces are acting “under the same guidelines” as the 2014 conflict, when up to 2,310 Gazans were killed. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers, five Israeli civilians and one Thai civilian were also killed during the unrest that year. UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, has called on both sides “stop the fire immediately.”
“We’re escalating towards a full-scale war. Leaders on all sides have to take the responsibility of de-escalation. The cost of war in Gaza is devastating and is being paid by ordinary people (…) Stop the violence now,” he said in a statement on Twitter. His message came after UN Secretary General António Guterres said the “spiraling escalation must cease immediately.” The deadly spike in violence comes amid heightened tensions in the region.
Israeli security forces clashed with hundreds of Palestinians over the weekend, who were protesting coronavirus restrictions in place that limited religious gatherings. Muslims around the world are observing Ramadan, the holiest month of the year. Palestinians had also been staging daily rallies to protest the proposed eviction of Palestinian families from their homes near East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers.
On Monday, an Israeli nationalists’ march to mark Jerusalem Day — originally scheduled to pass through Muslim areas of the Old City — had to be rerouted over fears the parade would be targeted. Jerusalem Day commemorates Israel’s 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War. Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of a potential future independent state, but Israel views the whole of the city as its own “eternal and indivisible” capital. EFE
