Israel, Hamas Escalate Deadly Strikes as U.S. Calls for Calm
Hamas #Hamas
(Bloomberg) — Israel unleashed a relentless attack on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip after a massive rocket barrage over the country’s commercial heartland, as the death toll climbed and the sides edged closer to all-out war.
Thirty-five people have been reported killed in Gaza, and five in Israel, since the most serious fighting since 2014 exploded on Monday night. A total of 850 rockets have been fired, and Israeli has carried out some 500 raids, according to the Israeli military.
“Hamas will receive blows here that it did not expect,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday after the first fatalities on the Israeli side. The military, which had initially targeted military facilities in Gaza, widened its net to assassinate several key Hamas intelligence figures and military commanders.
The escalation set off a flurry of diplomatic efforts to defuse the violence involving Egypt, the U.S. and United Nations. The UN Security Council said it would hold a second emergency session Wednesday to address the crisis. U.S. President Joe Biden directed National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to reach out to their Israeli counterparts.
The hostilities spilled over from weeks of clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in contested Jerusalem. The holy city, home to Jewish, Muslim and Christian shrines, lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and competing claims to it have underpinned the latest confrontation. Tensions have also been stoked by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s cancellation of Palestinian elections, over Hamas’s objections.
The violence has set off a wave of protests by Israeli Arabs in support of the Palestinians, and unprecedented clashes with Jews and destruction of property in several cities. A state of emergency was declared on Tuesday in the central city of Lod, where Jews and Arabs live in a mixed community, after Arab assailants set synagogues, shops and cars on fire following the killing of an Arab resident by a Jewish man amid rioting a day earlier.
The fighting between Israel and Gaza militants swelled on Tuesday evening when Israel bombed a 13-floor residential building used by Hamas, after warning its residents to evacuate. It’s a pressure tactic the military has used in the past, along with assassinations, to try to force Hamas to cease fire.
Video: Israel and Palestinian fighting intensifies as US calls for calm (AFP)
Israel and Palestinian fighting intensifies as US calls for calm
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Militants retaliated with hundreds of rockets on metropolitan Tel Aviv and the south that overwhelmed the country’s missile defense system and killed three people.
“The occupation set this fire in Jerusalem and is responsible for any bombing that takes place,” Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said. “If the occupation wants to escalate, then the resistance is ready, and if it wants to stop, the resistance is also ready.”
Israel and Gaza have skirmished repeatedly since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, and have fought three wars, the last seven years ago.
The current round has roots in tensions that have been festering since the beginning of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in April. Israeli restrictions on gathering at a traditional Ramadan meeting place outside Jerusalem’s Old City touched off the unrest, but after they were lifted, protests were rekindled by the threatened evictions of Palestinians from longtime homes in the eastern sector of the city that Israel captured in 1967. The Palestinians and much of the international community considers east Jerusalem occupied territory.
Fighting is flaring at a time when Netanyahu’s rivals are trying to piece together a government after the fourth election in two years, and it has already impeded those efforts.
Mansour Abbas, head of the Islamist United Arab List faction, froze negotiations to join that potential coalition, citing the ongoing flareup. The lethal surge in violence has made it untenable for Abbas to join a Zionist-led government at this time, but he told Israel Radio on Wednesday that he’ll go back to talks once the fighting is over.
(Updates with Israeli tally of rocket fire, raids in second paragraph)
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