TEL AVIV: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to restore security “on all fronts” after surging violence that included rocket fire from Lebanon and Syria and two more deaths on Monday.
Netanyahu also reinstated the defense minister whose firing he announced last month.
Heavy clashes, shootings, rocket strikes and a car-ramming attack have marred a period when the Muslim holy month of Ramadan coincides with the Jewish Passover and Christian Easter.
The latest casualties were a Palestinian teenager and a British-Israeli mother who succumbed on Monday to injuries from a West Bank gun attack that earlier killed her two daughters.
The day after Israeli police on Wednesday stormed the prayer hall of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque — Islam’s third-holiest site — more than 30 rockets were fired from Lebanese soil into Israel.
The Israeli army said the attack was most likely carried out by the Palestinian armed movement Hamas.
Israel then bombarded the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, targeting “terror infrastructures” it said belonged to Hamas.
“We will not allow the terrorist Hamas to establish itself in Lebanon,” by acting on “all fronts,” Netanyahu said at a news conference Monday.
Israeli-Palestinian violence had already intensified since Netanyahu’s new government took power in December, a coalition with extreme-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties.
The latest surge came late last month after he announced a “pause” for dialogue on judicial reform legislation, which split the nation and caused divisions in his government.
Among the political casualties was Yoav Gallant, whom the prime minister dismissed on March 26 after he called for a halt to the legislative process, citing national security concerns and threats by reserve military personnel not to report for duty.
Netanyahu is currently battling very low levels of domestic popularity. A recent survey showed him likely to lose if an election were held now.
At his news conference, Netanyahu said he and Gallant had “difficult disputes” but he had decided to put them in the past.
“Gallant remains in his post and we will continue to work together for the safety of the citizens of Israel,” he added.
In Tel Aviv, several hundred protesters took to the streets to denounce the government and condemn the prime minister’s speech, according to images broadcast by Israeli television.
Earlier Monday several government ministers joined a protest march by Jewish settlers, held under tight security in the north of the occupied West Bank.
In the latest shooting in the territory, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian teenager, Mohammed Fayez Balhan, 15, and wounded two other people, the Palestinian health ministry said, during what the army described as a raid to arrest a “terror suspect.”
The Israeli army confirmed its forces were operating in the Aqabat Jaber camp, the site of previous deadly Israeli raids this year, near Jericho, where soldiers were seeking “to apprehend a terror suspect.”
The army said troops responded with live fire after “suspects opened fire toward (soldiers), hurled explosive devices and Molotov cocktails.”
A suspect was taken in by security forces, they added.
Clashes erupted when the army entered the camp and surrounded several houses, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa. A Palestinian security official told AFP that five individuals had been arrested during the raid.
Hamas said it mourned the “young martyr” and praised those “standing up to this arrogant enemy.”
The operation came as a Jerusalem hospital confirmed that a British-Israeli woman, Lucy (Leah) Dee, had died after being seriously injured in a shooting attack Friday in the West Bank that killed her two daughters, aged 16 and 20.
Their car came under fire in the Jordan Valley, where Jericho is also located. The families were residents of Efrat, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly tweeted that there could be “no justification” for the “senseless violence.”
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War and hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers live in Israeli-approved settlements there which are considered illegal under international law.
Hundreds of Israelis marched Monday in the north of the West Bank, pushing for state approval of an Israeli settler outpost.
Several government ministers — including Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — appeared at the march to Eviatar, whose residents agreed to leave in 2021 while officials examined their case.
Addressing the crowd, Ben-Gvir said “the response to terror is to build” settlements.
Violence has flared anew since Israeli police stormed the prayer hall of Al-Aqsa mosque in a pre-dawn operation aimed at dislodging “law-breaking youths and masked agitators” they said had barricaded themselves inside.
Late Friday, an Italian tourist was killed and seven others wounded in a car-ramming attack in Tel Aviv.
The Israeli army also said it had launched strikes on targets in Syria Sunday after rockets fired from there landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The conflict has this year claimed the lives of at least 94 Palestinians, 19 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian, according to an AFP count based on Israeli and Palestinian official sources.
These figures include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, including minors, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, including minors, and three members of the Arab minority.
Israel’s Netanyahu vows to restore security as violence surges
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Israel’s Netanyahu vows to restore security as violence surges
- The latest surge came late last month after he announced a “pause” for dialogue on judicial reform legislation, which split the nation and caused divisions in his government
Gaza’s living conditions worsen as strong winds and hypothermia kill 5
- Hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged, the UN humanitarian office reported
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Strong winter winds collapsed walls onto flimsy tents for Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least four people, hospital authorities said Tuesday.
Dangerous living conditions persist in Gaza after more than two years of devastating Israeli bombardment and aid shortfalls. A ceasefire has been in effect since Oct. 10. But aid groups say that Palestinians broadly lack the shelter necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.
The dead include two women, a girl and a man, according to Shifa Hospital, Gaza City’s largest, which received the bodies.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday a 1-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight, while the spokesman for the UN’s children agency said over 100 children and teenagers have been killed by “military means” since the ceasefire began.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military said it exchanged fire Tuesday with six people spotted near its troops deployed in southern Gaza, killing at least two of them in western Rafah.
Family mourns relatives killed by wall collapse
Three members of the same family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 8-meter (26-foot) high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area along the Mediterranean shore of Gaza City, Shifa Hospital said. At least five others were injured.
Their relatives on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.
“The world has allowed us to witness death in all its forms,” Bassel Hamouda said after the funeral. “It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip.”
A second woman was killed when a wall fell on her tent in the western part of the city, Shifa Hospital said.
Hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged, the UN humanitarian office reported.
The UN and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The majority of Palestinians live in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to rubble during the war. When storms strike the territory, Palestinian rescue workers warn people against seeking shelter inside damaged buildings for fears of collapse. Aid groups say not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza during the truce.
In the central town of Zawaida, Associated Press footage showed inundated tents Tuesday morning, with people trying to rebuild their shelters.
Yasmin Shalha, a displaced woman from the northern town of Beit Lahiya, stood against winds that lifted the tarps of tents around her as she stitched hers back together with needle and thread. She said it had fallen on top of her family the night before, as they slept.
“The winds were very, very strong. The tent collapsed over us,” the mother of five told AP. “As you can see, our situation is dire.”
On the shore in southern Gaza, tents were swept into the Mediterranean. Families pulled what was left from the sea, while some built sand barriers to hold back rising water.
“The sea took our mattresses, our tents, our food and everything we owned,” Shaban Abu Ishaq said, as he dragged part of his tent out of the sea in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis.
Mohamed Al-Sawalha, a 72-year-old man from the northern refugee camp of Jabaliya, said the conditions most Palestinians in Gaza endure are barely livable.
“It doesn’t work neither in summer nor in winter,” he said of the tent. “We left behind houses and buildings (with) doors that could be opened and closed. Now we live in a tent. Even sheep don’t live like we do.”
Residents aren’t able to return to their homes in Israeli-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip.
Child death toll in Gaza rises
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the 1-year-old in the central town of Deir Al-Balah was the seventh fatality due to the cold conditions since winter started. Others included a baby just seven days old and a 4-year-old girl, whose deaths were announced Monday.
The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people were killed by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.
UNICEF spokesman James Elder said Tuesday at least 100 children under the age of 18 — 60 boys and 40 girls — have been killed since the truce began due to military operations, including drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, reflect incidents where enough details have been compiled to warrant recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He said hundreds of children have been wounded.
While “bombings and shootings have slowed” during the ceasefire, they have not stopped, Elder told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from Gaza City. “So what the world now calls calm would be considered a crisis anywhere else,” he said.
Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been struggling to keep the cold weather and storms at bay while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the winter months. It’s the third winter since the war between Israel and Hamas started on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others into Gaza.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 71,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.
