GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip: Palestinians grabbed their children and belongings and fled neighborhoods on the outskirts of Gaza City on Friday as Israel unleashed a heavy barrage of artillery fire and airstrikes, killing a family of 6 in their home. Israel said it was clearing a network of militant tunnels ahead of a possible ground invasion.
Israel has massed troops along the border and called up 9,000 reservists as fighting intensifies with the Islamic militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Palestinian militants have fired some 1,800 rockets, and the Israeli military has launched more than 600 airstrikes, toppling at least three high-rise apartment buildings, and has shelled some areas with tanks stationed near the frontier.
As Israel and Hamas plunged closer to all-out war despite international efforts at a cease-fire, communal violence in Israel erupted for a fourth night. Jewish and Arab mobs clashed in the flashpoint town of Lod, even after Israel dispatched additional security forces.
The Gaza Health Ministry says the toll from the fighting has risen to 119 killed, including 31 children and 19 women, with 830 wounded. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups have confirmed 20 deaths in their ranks, though Israel says that number is much higher. Seven people have been killed in Israel, including a 6-year-old boy and a soldier.
Palestinians living outside Gaza City, near the northern and eastern frontiers with Israel, fled the intense artillery bombardment Friday. Families arrived at the UN-run schools in the city in pick-up trucks, on donkeys and by foot, hauling pillows and pans, blankets and bread.
“We were planning to leave our homes at night, but Israeli jets bombarded us so we had to wait until the morning,” said Hedaia Maarouf, who fled with her extended family of 19 people, including 13 children. “We were terrified for our children, who were screaming and shaking.”
In the northern Gaza Strip, Rafat Tanani, his pregnant wife and four children, aged 7 and under, were killed after an Israeli warplane reduced their four-story apartment building to rubble, residents said. Four strikes hit the building at 11 p.m., just before the family was going to sleep, Rafat’s brother Fadi said. The building’s owner and his wife were also killed.
“It was a massacre,” said Sadallah Tanani, another relative. “My feelings are indescribable.”
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said tanks stationed near the border fired 50 rounds. It was part of a large operation that also involved airstrikes and was aimed at destroying tunnels beneath Gaza City used by militants to evade surveillance and airstrikes that the military refers to as “the Metro.”
“As always, the aim is to strike military targets and to minimize collateral damage and civilian casualties,” he said. “Unlike our very elaborate efforts to clear civilian areas before we strike high-rise or large buildings inside Gaza, that wasn’t feasible this time.”
The strikes came after Egyptian mediators rushed to Israel for cease-fire talks that showed no signs of progress. Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations were leading the truce efforts.
The fighting broke out late Monday when Hamas fired a long-range rocket at Jerusalem in support of Palestinian protests there against the policing of a flashpoint holy site and efforts by Jewish settlers to evict dozens of Palestinian families from their homes.
Since then, Israel has attacked hundreds of targets in Gaza, causing earth-shaking explosions in densely populated areas. Of the 1,800 rockets Gaza militants have fired, more than 400 fell short or misfired, according to the military.
The rockets have brought life in parts of southern Israel to a standstill, and several barrages have targeted the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv, some 70 kilometers (45 miles) from Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue the operation, saying in a video statement that Israel would “extract a very heavy price from Hamas.”
In Washington, US President Joe Biden said he spoke with Netanyahu about calming the fighting but also backed the Israeli leader by saying “there has not been a significant overreaction.”
He said the goal now is to “get to a point where there is a significant reduction in attacks, particularly rocket attacks.” He called the effort “a work in progress.”
Israel has come under heavy international criticism for civilian casualties during three previous wars in Gaza, which is home to more than 2 million Palestinians. It says Hamas is responsible for endangering civilians by placing military infrastructure in civilian areas and launching rockets from them.
Hamas showed no signs of backing down. It fired its most powerful rocket, the Ayyash, nearly 200 kilometers (120 miles) into southern Israel on Thursday. The rocket landed in the open desert but briefly disrupted flight traffic at the southern Ramon airport. Hamas has also launched two drones that Israel said it quickly shot down.
Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida said the group was not afraid of a ground invasion, which would be a chance “to increase our catch” of Israeli soldiers.
The current eruption of violence began a month ago in Jerusalem. A focal point of clashes was Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, on a hilltop compound revered by Jews and Muslims. Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem, which includes sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, to be the capital of their future state.
The violent clashes between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem and other mixed cities across Israel has added a new layer of volatility to the conflict not seen in more than two decades.
The violence continued overnight into Friday. A Jewish man was shot and seriously wounded in Lod, the epicenter of the troubles, and Israeli media said a second Jewish man was shot. In the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Jaffa, an Israeli soldier was attacked by a group of Arabs and hospitalized in serious condition.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said some 750 suspects have been arrested since the communal violence began earlier this week. He said police had clashed overnight with individuals in Lod and Tel Aviv who hurled rocks and firebombs at them.
The fighting deepened a political crisis that has sent Israel careening through four inconclusive elections in just two years. After March elections, Netanyahu failed to form a government coalition. Now his political rivals have three weeks to try to do so.
Those efforts have been greatly complicated by the fighting. His opponents include a broad range of parties that have little in common. They would need the support of an Arab party, whose leader has said he cannot negotiate while Israel is fighting in Gaza.
Palestinians flee as Israeli artillery pounds northern Gaza
https://arab.news/8nm6u
Palestinians flee as Israeli artillery pounds northern Gaza
- Israel has massed troops along the border and called up 9,000 reservists as fighting intensifies with the Islamic militant group Hamas
- As Israel and Hamas plunged closer to all-out war despite international efforts at a cease-fire, communal violence in Israel erupted for a fourth night
Trump weighs Iran strikes to inspire renewed protests, sources say
- Trump’s options include targeting leaders and security forces, US sources say
- Iran prepares for military confrontation, seeks diplomatic channels, Iranian official says
DUBAI: US President Donald Trump is weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces and leaders to inspire protesters, multiple sources said, even as Israeli and Arab officials said air power alone would not topple the clerical rulers. Two US sources familiar with the discussions said Trump wanted to create conditions for “regime change” after a crackdown crushed a nationwide protest movement earlier this month, killing thousands of people.
To do so, he was looking at options to hit commanders and institutions Washington holds responsible for the violence, to give protesters the confidence that they could overrun government and security buildings, they said.
One of the US sources said the options being discussed by Trump’s aides also included a much larger strike intended to have lasting impact, possibly against the ballistic missiles that can reach US allies in the Middle East or its nuclear enrichment programs.
The other US source said Trump has not yet made a final decision on a course of action including whether to take the military path. The arrival of a US aircraft carrier and supporting warships in the Middle East this week has expanded Trump’s capabilities to potentially take military action, after he repeatedly threatened intervention over Iran’s crackdown.
Four Arab officials, three Western diplomats and a senior Western source whose governments were briefed on the discussions said they were concerned that instead of bringing people onto the streets, such strikes could weaken a movement already in shock after the bloodiest repression by authorities since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, said that without large-scale military defections Iran’s protests remained “heroic but outgunned.”
The sources in this story requested anonymity to talk about sensitive matters. Iran’s foreign office, the US Department of Defense and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. The Israeli Prime Minister’s office declined to comment. Trump urged Iran on Wednesday to come to the table and make a deal on nuclear weapons, warning that any future US attack would be more severe than a June bombing campaign against three nuclear sites. He described the ships in the region as an “armada” sailing to Iran.
A senior Iranian official said that Iran was “preparing itself for a military confrontation, while at the same time making use of diplomatic channels.” However, Washington was not showing openness to diplomacy, the official said.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is civilian, was ready for dialogue “based on mutual respect and interests” but would defend itself “like never before” if pushed, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in a post on X on Wednesday.
Trump has not publicly detailed what he is looking for in any deal. His administration’s previous negotiating points have included banning Iran from independently enriching uranium and restrictions on long-range ballistic missiles and on Tehran’s network of armed proxies in the Middle East.
Limits of air power
A senior Israeli official with direct knowledge of planning between Israel and the United States said Israel does not believe airstrikes alone can topple the Islamic Republic, if that is Washington’s goal.
“If you’re going to topple the regime, you have to put boots on the ground,” he said, noting that even if the United States killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran would “have a new leader that will replace him.”
Only a combination of external pressure and an organized domestic opposition could shift Iran’s political trajectory, the official said.
The Israeli official said Iran’s leadership had been weakened by the unrest but remained firmly in control despite the ongoing deep economic crisis that sparked the protests. Multiple US intelligence reports reached a similar conclusion, that the conditions that led to the protests were still in place, weakening the government, but without major fractures, two people familiar with the matter said.
The Western source said they believed Trump’s goal appeared to be to engineer a change in leadership, rather than “topple the regime,” an outcome that would be similar to Venezuela, where US intervention replaced the president without a wholesale change of government.
Khamenei has publicly acknowledged several thousand deaths during the protests. He blamed the unrest on the United States, Israel and what he called “seditionists.”
US-based rights group HRANA has put the unrest-related death toll at 5,937, including 214 security personnel, while official figures put the death toll at 3,117. Reuters has been unable to independently verify the numbers.
Khamenei retains control but less visible
At 86, Khamenei has retreated from daily governance, reduced public appearances and is believed to be residing in secure locations after Israeli strikes last year decimated many of Iran’s senior military leaders, regional officials said.
Day-to-day management has shifted to figures aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including senior adviser Ali Larijani, they said. The powerful Guards dominate Iran’s security network and big parts of the economy. However, Khamenei retains final authority over war, succession and nuclear strategy — meaning political change is very difficult until he exits the scene, they said. Iran’s foreign ministry did not respond to questions about Khamenei.
In Washington and Jerusalem, some officials have argued that a transition in Iran could break the nuclear deadlock and eventually open the door to more cooperative ties with the West, two of the Western diplomats said.
But, they cautioned, there is no clear successor to Khamenei. In that vacuum, the Arab officials and diplomats said they believe the IRGC could take over, entrenching hardline rule, deepening the nuclear standoff and regional tensions.
Any successor seen as emerging under foreign pressure would be rejected and could strengthen, not weaken the IRGC, the official said.
Across the region, from the Gulf to Turkiye, officials say they favor containment over collapse — not out of sympathy for Tehran, but out of fear that turmoil inside a nation of 90 million, riven by sectarian and ethnic fault lines, could unleash instability far beyond Iran’s borders.
A fractured Iran could spiral into civil war as happened after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, two of the Western diplomats warned, unleashing an influx of refugees, fueling Islamist militancy and disrupting oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a global energy chokepoint.
The gravest risk, analyst Vatanka warned, is fragmentation into “early-stage Syria,” with rival units and provinces fighting for territory and resources.
Regional blowback
Gulf states — long-time US allies and hosts to major American bases – fear they would be the first targets for Iranian retaliation that could include Iranian missiles or drone attacks from the Tehran-aligned Houthis in Yemen. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Egypt have lobbied Washington against a strike on Iran. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has told Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian that Riyadh will not allow its airspace or territory to be used for military actions against Tehran.
“The United States may pull the trigger,” one of the Arab sources said, “but it will not live with the consequences. We will.”
Mohannad Hajj-Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center said the US deployments suggest planning has shifted from a single strike to something more sustained, driven by a belief in Washington and Jerusalem that Iran could rebuild its missile capabilities and eventually weaponize its enriched uranium.
The most likely outcome is a “grinding erosion — elite defections, economic paralysis, contested succession — that frays the system until it snaps,” analyst Vatanka said.
