Israel steps up attacks, firing artillery from Gaza’s border

Israeli ground forces bombarded the Gaza Strip with artillery on Friday, escalating a conflict that has already brought Israeli airstrikes, Palestinian rocket attacks and sectarian violence on the streets of Israeli cities.

>>Patrick Kingsley, Vivian Yee and Richard Pérez-PeñaThe New York Times
Published : 14 May 2021, 06:26 PM
Updated : 14 May 2021, 06:27 PM

As world leaders called for calm and US and Egyptian officials tried to broker an end to the violence, the fighting that began on Monday ratcheted up instead. By Friday morning, Israeli authorities reported that eight Israelis, including one soldier, had been killed. Palestinian health officials reported the death toll in Gaza at 120 and the overall number of wounded in the latest violence at 900.

The Israeli military said that by Thursday evening, about 1,800 rockets had been fired at Israel from Gaza, the territory controlled by the militant group Hamas, while Gaza authorities reported more than 150 strikes from Israeli jets and drones, along with the artillery fire, wounding more than 50 people overnight.

“This is the largest focused operation against a focused target that we have conducted so far,” said Jonathan Conricus, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. Hidai Zilberman, another spokesman, told Kan Radio on Friday that the Israel Defense Forces had deployed as many as 160 aircraft at once in the attack.

Conricus said the target of the attack was a network of tunnels underneath the Palestinian-controlled territory, through which Hamas is known to deploy militants and smuggle weapons. The spokesman described the complex network as a “city beneath a city.”

The Israel Defense Forces clarified that no Israeli troops were actually in Gaza despite earlier reports to the contrary. Instead, the army had massed troops along the Gazan border and was shelling the territory from Israel.

Israeli ground forces take up position in Israel at the border with Gaza Strip on Friday, May 14, 2021. Israeli ground forces bombarded Gaza Strip with artillery on Friday, escalating a conflict that has already brought Israeli airstrikes, Palestinian rocket attacks and sectarian violence on the streets of Israeli cities. (Dan Balilty/New York Times)

“This operation will continue as long as it takes to restore peace and security to the state of Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement released early Friday.

Zilberman warned that the operation might intensify, saying that “all options are on the table, and forces are preparing and will continue to accumulate during the holiday” — the feast of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

Hamas launched dozens of rocket volleys overnight at Israeli targets, killing an 87-year-old woman who was running to a safe room.

The latest round of Israeli-Palestinian unrest began Monday after clashes between protesters and the Israeli police at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Hamas then began firing into Israel with the increasingly potent rockets it has built with the aid of Iran, and Israel responded with air attacks on Hamas and other militant targets in Gaza.

The Biden administration has called for peaceful resolution, while insisting that the rocket attacks on Israel must stop and refraining from any public criticism of Israel.

But the two entrenched sides did not appear ready to cede ground.

Palestinian children ride in the trunk of a car as their families flee Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 13, 2021, following an Israeli airstrike. (Samar Abu Elouf/The New York Times)

“The Americans are talking to me, the Egyptians are talking to me,” Israel’s defence minister, Benny Gantz, said during a video meeting with local council heads, “but I remain focused on the reason we went out on this campaign: to make Hamas and Islamic Jihad pay a price.”

The most surprising turn has been the violence between Jews and Arabs who have lived side by side in Israeli cities, with reports of gangs of people from one group pummelling members of another. Riots, stone throwing and protests continued overnight.

The crisis has come at a time when Israel’s political leaders are struggling to form a government after four inconclusive elections in two years. Netanyahu’s attempt to build a majority coalition in the Israeli parliament failed, and his rival, Yair Lapid, had been invited to try to form a government.

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