The Israeli raid this Thursday in the Jenin refugee camp – one of the deadliest in recent years in the West Bank, with nine dead, two of them civilians – has spread violence to Gaza. This morning, Palestinian militants launched two rockets from the strip, which were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile shield. The Israeli Armed Forces, already on high alert because of the risk that the tension was not limited to the West Bank, announced shortly after the aerial bombardment of an underground rocket manufacturing facility. “This attack will significantly slow down Hamas’ efforts to intensify and arm itself,” the army said in a statement recalling that it considers Hamas “responsible” and that it will be the one that “will suffer the consequences” of any attack against Israel that emanates from the strip, which the Islamist movement has ruled since 2007.
Five more rockets were later launched into Israeli territory and the army reported a second air strike on Gaza. According to Palestinian witnesses cited by Reuters, he targeted a Hamas training camp. In total, Israeli aviation launched about 15 missiles. In the Israeli towns near the Strip, the sirens sounded indicating to the population the need to seek refuge. At the moment, no victims have been reported in either of the two territories.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has ordered security forces to be “ready to act, with a variety of offensive measures and high-quality targets, should it be necessary to continue the operation until peace is restored to the citizens of Israel.” Israel”, while Islamic Jihad has defined its shells as a “message to the enemy” about the price of “shedding Palestinian blood”.
The clashes take place the day after the Israeli army killed 10 Palestinians, nine of them in an unusual raid on the Jenin refugee camp, a stronghold of the Palestinian militias. The tenth victim was killed in a protest over the raid, in Al Ram, near Jerusalem.
Despite the verbal escalation, both the number of rockets fired from Gaza and Israeli shelling seem limited. The day has not left any signs of a spiral of violence either. However, it was precisely another incursion into Jenin that last August degenerated in Gaza into three days of hostilities between Israel and Islamic Jihad in which Israeli shelling killed 45 Palestinians (including 15 children) and the militia fired a thousand rockets. The usual mediators – Egypt, Qatar and the UN – are trying to prevent a repeat.
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Almog Cohen, a deputy from the far-right Jewish Power party, part of the government coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu for almost a month, published a tweet congratulating the soldiers for their performance in Jenin that ended with the phrase: “Keep killing them.” Twitter deleted it this Friday because it broke its rules and, according to Cohen, suspended the account for 11 hours. The deputy considered “obvious to any sensible person” that he was referring to “the damned terrorists, and not to those not involved” in the clashes. Two of the Palestinians killed were civilians, one of them a 60-year-old woman. Yes, another tweet follows in his profile, in which he expresses his desire that “the response to Hamas for firing rockets at the cities of the south [de Israel] not be proportional.
אני מצפה שהתגובה לחמאס בעקבות ירי הרקטות לערי הדרום תהיה לא-פרופוריצי. התקדים המסוכן של “חיבiver
— אלמוג כהן Almog cohen (@almog_cohen08) January 26, 2023
Hours after the incursion in Jenin, the Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas, declared the end of the security coordination with Israel derived from the Oslo Accords (1993), although he has already announced the measure on previous occasions without applying it. That same day, the US Department of State announced that Secretary of State Antony Blinken would travel to the Middle East this weekend. The visit, which includes Egypt, Israel and the West Bank, had been planned for weeks, but now it will be marked by the escalation of tension.
The year has started with more than one Palestinian death on average per day: 30. It is a notably higher balance than that of 2022, which was already the bloodiest in years, both for Palestinians and Israelis.
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