Israel and armed groups in Gaza exchanged missile and rocket fire again on Friday, despite mediation efforts aimed at ending a flare-up of violence that has claimed 32 lives since Tuesday.
Egypt, a traditional mediator between the belligerents, is working to obtain a truce, at a time when international calls are increasing to end this escalation, the most serious since August 2022 between armed movements in Gaza and Israel.
The violence began on Tuesday with Israeli strikes targeting Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group classified as a “terrorist organization” by Israel, the European Union and the United States.
Mohammed al-Hindi, head of the Islamic Jihad’s political department, who arrived in Cairo on Thursday, said he hoped that talks for a truce “would end today (Friday)”.
“We hope to get an honorable deal that reflects the interests of our people and the resistance,” he told AFP.
But after a relative pause in the night, rockets were again fired at Israeli soil, according to AFP reporters in Gaza. The army, for its part, said it had targeted sites belonging to the Islamic Jihad.
In the Israeli localities adjacent to the Gaza Strip, the warning sirens once again went off.
They also sounded about fifteen km from Jerusalem, in Israeli colonies in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, noted an AFP journalist.
” Where are we going ? »
In a short statement, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad claimed to have targeted Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Israeli cities, “in response to the continuing killings and attacks against the Palestinian people”.
In Gaza City, the streets were emptied of residents, holed up in their homes, and most businesses closed.
The house of Sabah Abou Khater, 55, was destroyed in Beit Hanoun, in the north of the Palestinian territory. “Where are we going now? There are 10 of us. We have no bed, no shelter, no furniture,” the woman told AFP.
The Health Ministry has reported 31 dead in Gaza, including children, and more than 90 injured, since Tuesday. Among the dead are five Islamic Jihad military commanders targeted by Israel, as well as fighters from that movement and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), another armed group.
In Israel, a person was killed Thursday in Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, by a rocket that struck an inhabited building, according to the police. Emergency services reported five wounded in Israel by projectile shrapnel since the first Palestinian fire on Wednesday.
According to the army, 866 rockets were fired at Israel, of which 260 were intercepted by the anti-aircraft defense system.
The army claims that 25% of the rockets fell inside Gazan territory, killing four people, including three minors. AFP was unable to get a reaction from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to these claims.
“Hit Tel Aviv”
Since the beginning of its operation described as “preventive”, the Israeli army has struck 170 Islamic Jihad targets, sites or members of the group.
A source within the movement told AFP on Friday that “one of the most important conditions for a ceasefire is that Israel cease the killings in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.”
“Israel is disrupting Egyptian efforts for a ceasefire,” another group source told AFP.
On Thursday, the European Union called for “an immediate ceasefire” and Washington urged all parties “to ensure that civilian deaths are avoided and that […] the violence decreases”.
“Resisters, hit Tel Aviv,” chanted protesters in Saida, a city in southern Lebanon home to the country’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, an AFP photographer noted.
The Gaza Strip, a cramped territory plagued by poverty and unemployment where 2.3 million Palestinians live, has been under an Israeli blockade since the takeover of the Islamist movement Hamas in 2007.
The territory has been the scene of several wars with Israel since 2008.
In August 2022, three days of clashes between Israel and Islamic Jihad had caused the death of 49 Palestinians, including at least 19 children according to the UN. More than a thousand rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, injuring three.