Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip on Thursday in retaliation for six rockets launched from the enclave, a day after 11 Palestinians were killed in a violent Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, where the most violent start to the year since 2000 is taking place.
(Also: Israel bombs Gaza and Palestinians fire rockets after ‘massacre’ in West Bank)
Early in the morning, Israeli army warplanes attacked a weapons manufacturing center and a military complex in Gaza, both belonging to the Islamist Hamas movement, which has ruled the Strip since 2007.
These bombardments were in response to six rockets fired hours earlier from the enclave, five of which were intercepted by anti-aircraft defense systems and one fell in an unpopulated area.
(Read: Ten Palestinians killed after the most violent attack in 18 years in the West Bank)
This exchange of fire left no victims and comes a day after a violent Israeli military raid in the city of Nablus, one of the Palestinian armed resistance nuclei in the northern West Bank, left 11 Palestinians dead and more than a hundred injured.
In addition to the armed response from Gaza to yesterday’s raid, a civil and political response was also added today by ordinary Palestinians, many of whom today joined a general strike both in the West Bank and in the occupied east of Jerusalem.
The incursion this Wednesday of Israeli troops in Nablus sparked heavy armed clashes with local militiamen and included among its victims an elderly man, a minor and six militiamen linked to local armed groups.
This raid, one of the most violent in the area in recent years and which did not leave Israeli troops injured, was aimed at capturing “suspects involved in attacks” against Israelis, according to the Army, which explained that its troops they killed the three Palestinians they were looking for.
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An editorial in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the Hebrew-language newspaper with the largest circulation in Israel, said that these events “reminiscent of the worst days of the first and second intifadas.”
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is experiencing a new peak of violence, which alone so far this year has already left 61 Palestinians dead. This is the deadliest start to the year in the West Bank since 2000, according to the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).
Many of these deaths occurred during armed confrontations triggered by military raids in the West Bank.
Added to these are 11 deaths on the Israeli side, all in the context of Palestinian attacks in East Jerusalem.
timid reactions
“I am deeply shocked by the continuing cycle of violence and horrified by the loss of civilian life,” said the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, last night, calling for de-escalation.
For its part, the European Union also said it was “deeply alarmed by the spiral of violence in the West Bank.”
But for the PNA Foreign Ministry, these are “timid, weak” reactions, written in “repetitive and routine formulas” that do not hold Israel responsible for its “war crimes and crimes against humanity” and “are not consistent in terms of international law.
Mohamed Shtayeh, prime minister of the PNA, described the raid as “organized terrorism” and denounced that Israel seeks to transfer its internal political crisis to the conflict with the Palestinians.
(Also: West Bank sees a bolstered far right)
In this sense, the former chief of the General Staff of the Israel Forces, Lieutenant General (retired) Dan Halutz, told Army Radio that “the increase in operations like these is directly related to the moment in which the current government took office. “of Benjamin Netanyahu, who returned to power last December along with his ultra-Orthodox and ultra-nationalist associates, and faces strong opposition to several of his political guidelines.
“These issues cannot be completely unrelated,” he said.
Raids like yesterday are not new but have become almost daily since late March last year, when Israel launched the so-called “Breaking the Wave” operation in response to a series of deadly attacks by Palestinians or Israeli Arabs.
Israel took control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967 and since then has maintained an occupation of these territories considered among the longest in recent history.
Yemeli Ortega
EFE
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