Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip clashed Thursday firing rockets and missiles in the aftermath of the deadliest military incursion into the occupied West Bank since 2005.
Israeli forces on Wednesday killed 11 Palestinians, including a 16-year-old boy, and, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, shot more than 80 people during the operation in Nablus, in the north of the country.
According to a recurring scenario, this violence was followed in the night by rocket fire from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, followed by Israeli airstrikes on this territory under the control of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas since 2007.
No casualties have been recorded following this new violence, which comes almost two months after the inauguration of a new government in Israel, one of the most right-wing in the country’s history and which is notably composed of supporters of a hard line vis-à-vis the Palestinians.
“We have a clear policy: to strike terrorism with force and strengthen our roots in our land,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday at the start of a cabinet meeting. “Those who seek to attack us will pay the price.”
Paris urged “all actors to refrain from any action that could feed the spiral” of violence and the United States said it was “extremely concerned” by the level of violence in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 by Israel.
“Burning”
Since the beginning of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 61 Palestinians (including members of armed groups and civilians including minors) and nine civilians (including three minors) and an Israeli policeman as well as a Ukrainian, according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
In Gaza, under Israeli blockade since 2007, six rockets were fired before dawn at Israel, according to the Israeli army.
These shootings were claimed by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which had called on “the resistance forces” to respond “without hesitation” to the “major crime” committed according to him by the Israeli army in Nablus.
The Israeli army said it intercepted five rockets using its air defense system. It then targeted “an arms manufacturing plant” and a “military camp” both belonging to Hamas.
On Thursday afternoon, Palestinians burned tires near the border fence between the micro-territory and Israel, causing thick clouds of black smoke.
“The days to come will be hot and we will not stand idly by,” said protester Mohamed Ahmed, his head wrapped in a keffiyeh.
“Worrying disregard for life”
According to the Israeli army, the operation carried out on Wednesday in the Palestinian autonomous sector in Nablus was of an “anti-terrorist” nature.
“Three suspects wanted and involved in armed attacks [en Cisjordanie] and planning attacks in the immediate future [ont] neutralized,” she said, adding that she had fired rockets at the building where the suspects were barricaded.
The use of this type of weapon “in a densely populated area, in broad daylight and at a time of high activity of the inhabitants suggests a worrying disregard for the lives and safety of passers-by”, said the United Nations High Commissioner United for Human Rights, Volker Türk.
He reiterated his call to “put an end to the illogicality of escalation”.
After the Israeli raid, the Palestinian Minister of Civil Affairs, Hussein al-Sheikh, denounced a “premeditated and barbaric criminal act”.
Talaat Ziada, head of the intensive care unit at Rafidia hospital in Nablus, said his youngest patient was an 11-year-old boy, still hospitalized with gunshot wounds to the stomach and leg.
His hospital and the town turned into a “war zone” on Wednesday, he said. “The hallways and stairs were covered in blood.”
Islamic Jihad said one of the local commanders of its military wing was among the dead. According to the armed group Areen al-Oussoud (“The Den of the Lions”), based in Nablus, six fighters from different Palestinian factions are among the 11 dead.
Israeli forces have been stepping up for nearly a year what they present as “anti-terrorist” operations in search of “suspects” in the northern West Bank, particularly in Nablus and Jenin, strongholds of Palestinian armed groups.