Israeli air strikes hit military installations of the radical Hamas faction in the Gaza Strip on Saturday (18), in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave, led by the Islamist movement.
There are, so far, no reports of injuries in Gaza or Israel, which intercepted a rocket launched from the city of Ashkelon, setting off air strike sirens and sending residents to bomb shelters.
“In response to the rocket attack, Israel Defense Forces aircraft hit several Hamas terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip,” Tel Aviv said in a statement. According to the news channel Al Jazeera, the Israeli attacks hit farmland in Gaza. The Palestinian group, persuasively, called the Israeli response “extension of aggression to all Palestinian territories”.
“Israel’s occupation is desperately trying to stop the Palestinian struggle,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem said in a press release. He also stated that the group “will continue the legitimate struggle against the occupation until it achieves its aspirations for freedom and independence”.
The Israel-Gaza border has enjoyed a period of relative calm since May 2021, when Israelis and Palestinians fought an 11-day conflict. While Saturday’s episode does not appear to signal an escalation, violence has escalated in the occupied West Bank and Israel in recent months.
On Friday (17), Israeli soldiers killed three armed Palestinians in the city of Jenin. One of the victims was a member of Hamas, and the other two would be linked to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group. Israel, meanwhile, said its troops were attacked in an operation to confiscate weapons.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 60 citizens were killed by Israeli forces in 2022. On the other hand, terrorist attacks in Israeli cities have caused 20 deaths since March.
In one of the clashes, also in Jenin, the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who worked for Al Jazeera, was killed, in an episode that caused protests of repudiation around the world. The case is investigated – Palestinians accuse Israeli shootings for the death of the professional.
A report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council released earlier this month blamed Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territories for the cycle of violence in the region.
The material is the result of an independent commission formed by three members —India, South Africa and Australia— and created by the United Nations human rights arm after the outbreak of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in May last year, which left more than 240 dead.
Israel condemned the document and called it a “waste of public money”. US President Joe Biden is due to meet with leaders from both sides during a trip to the region in July.
