JERUSALEM — Militants in Gaza fired more than 200 rockets into southern Israel on Saturday, and Israel responded with airstrikes and artillery fire, ending weeks of relative calm and threatening efforts to forge a long-term truce. Palestinians said at least six people, including a baby, were killed by Israeli actions.
In Israel, rocket sirens blared and thousands of Israeli civilians – as far as 30 miles from Gaza – spent the day in or close to bomb shelters.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its Iron Dome air-defense batteries intercepted dozens of the rockets. Israeli emergency services said an 80-year-old woman was seriously injured by shrapnel during the rocket barrage and a 50-year-old man was treated for moderate wounds.
In Gaza, health authorities said a 22-year-old man and a 37 woman and her 14-month-old baby girl were killed as Israeli jets carried out airstrikes. An additional 18 were injured. Israeli officials said they hit dozens of “terror targets” inside the Palestinian enclave, which is control by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Saturday’s violence comes in the midst of negotiations over a longer term truce between Hamas and Israel, during which the militant group has tried to assert pressure in negotiations with rocket fire and incendiary balloons. Hamas is attempting to secure an easing of Israeli restrictions on trade and movement, in return for a lull in violence.
However, the Israeli military said that Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second largest militant group, which is also involved in the negotiations, was responsible for the rocket fire.
In a joint statement Gaza’s militant factions said that the rocket fire was in response “targeting and assassination” of their militants a day earlier. “Our response will be tougher and larger and broader in the face of aggression,” they said in a statement.
The Israeli military reported on Friday that two soldiers were lightly wounded in a shooting incident along its border with Gaza. In response, Israel struck sites belonging to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigade, Hamas’s military wing, killing two fighters.
In addition on Friday, two Palestinian protesters were killed taking part in ongoing weekly demonstrations at the border fence with Israel, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
It also said tanks and military jets were targeting sites in the northern and eastern sections of Gaza. The Army’s Chief of the Staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi met with senior security officials and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to be briefed.
“It’s a reply to the Israeli targeting of peaceful civilians yesterday by Israeli snipers during the 58th Friday of Great March of Return,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s bureau for international relations, referring to the weekly protests staged in Gaza since last year. “Also, to the procrastination policies of the occupation toward lifting the siege on Gaza.”
Gazans have been holding weekly demonstrations along the border, protesting the dire humanitarian situation in the strip that worsens daily and the ongoing land, sea and air blockade imposed by Israel since Hamas forcibly took power in 2007. Egypt opens its border with Gaza only sporadically.
Hamas spokesman Abdullatif Al-Qanoua said the group would continue to “respond to the crimes of the occupation” and “not allow the blood of our people to be shed.”
Musab al-Buraim, spokesman of Islamic Jihad, the second largest militant faction in Gaza, said in a short statement that it too was committed to “resistance.”
Representatives of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad visited Egypt this week to discuss the understandings reached with Israel to reduce tensions. The Egyptians have spent months trying to forge a long-term truce agreement between the sides in an effort to bring calm and ease the dire humanitarian situation in for two million Gazans.
But Saturday’s unrest, disrupting the lives of so many Israeli citizens, could impact attempts by Netanyahu to form a coalition after being re-elected for a fifth term. His last government began to unravel after a similar flare-up with Gaza, when then Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman resigned after calling for a tougher approach to the rocket fire.
Standing down from his post last November, Liberman, head of the hawkish Yisrael Beitenu party, said that agreeing to the cease-fire with Hamas was “surrendering to terror.” He said proposed firmer military action against Hamas and other militant factions in Gaza, even if this risked a wider conflict.
In March, Netanyahu’s trip to Washington to meet with President Trump and speak at the annual AIPAC policy conference was cut short after a rocket fired from Gaza slammed into a house in central Israel.
Rocket fire and airstrikes similar to Saturday happens periodically.
In 2014, a 50-day deadly war between Israel and Hamas saw hundreds of rockets being fired into Israel, reaching as far as Tel Aviv and massive Israeli aerial bombardments, killing more than 2000 Palestinians. More than 70 Israelis and one foreign national were also killed.
There were worries in Israel that unrest could disrupt preparations for the Eurovision Song Contest, an international singing event taking place in Tel Aviv later this month. Contestants from across Europe are already in Israel to prepare for the event.
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