The Israeli army carried out strikes on the Gaza Strip on Friday in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian micro-territory, after the deadliest Israeli raid in years in the occupied West Bank.
Israel, which holds Hamas in power in Gaza responsible for all the firing of projectiles from this territory, announced that it had carried out at least two series of night strikes there against infrastructures of the Islamist movement, in the north and in the center. .
No casualties have been reported in the territory under Israeli blockade since 2007.
The rocket fire, mostly intercepted by Israel’s air defense system, was not claimed, but Palestinian armed groups had promised to respond to Thursday morning’s Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the north of the West Bank, in which nine Palestinians were killed.
The projectiles fired in the night “are a message: the enemy (Israeli, editor’s note) must be wary because the Palestinian blood shed is expensive,” Islamic Jihad said in a statement on Friday.
This organization was the target of the Israeli military incursion into Jenin because it was planning an attack inside Israel, Israeli sources said.
A total of nine Palestinians died during the raid. A tenth Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire in Al-Ram, near Ramallah, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported.
The United Nations has not recorded such a high death toll in a single Israeli operation in the West Bank since it began counting the victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2005.
“Urgent” measures
Calm prevails Friday in the streets of Jenin where the shops are however closed as part of a strike, noted an AFP journalist.
Following the Israeli raid, the Palestinian Authority denounced “a massacre” and announced that it was ending security cooperation with Israel, a first since 2020.
The US State Department said it regretted this decision, judging it “very important that the parties maintain, even deepen, their security coordination”.
The head of American diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, is due to visit Israel and the West Bank on Monday and Tuesday to insist, according to Washington, on “the urgent need to take de-escalation measures”.
The United Arab Emirates, which normalized relations with Israel in 2020, “condemned the assault by Israeli forces” and called for an “urgent” meeting of the UN Security Council.
thirty dead
Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila further accused Israeli forces of firing tear gas into the pediatric unit of a hospital in Jenin during their operation, which the army denied.
Israel “is not looking for escalation” but is preparing “for all scenarios”, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday, according to a statement.
The Israeli army, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, carries out almost daily operations through this Palestinian territory, particularly in the areas of Jenin and Nablus, strongholds of armed Palestinian factions.
The Jenin camp, which dates back to 1953, is home to more than 23,000 refugees according to UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees.
In May 2022, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, star of Al Jazeera, was killed there while covering an Israeli raid.
Thursday’s deaths bring to 30 the number of Palestinians, civilians or members of armed groups, killed since the beginning of the year in violence with Israeli forces or civilians.