Israel escalates raids in the Gaza Strip, faces unrest inside the Strip

An atmosphere of a country mired in a dual conflict prevails in Israel, amid an escalation of bloody firefights with the Islamists of Hamas who govern in Gaza Strip and unrest in its cities, which have a mixed Arab-Israeli population. After midnight, air raid sirens warning of incoming rockets sounded again in the south, in the metropolis Tel Aviv, but—for the first time since Monday—also in the north. Five people were injured when a rocket struck an apartment building in the Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force continued to strike Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian enclave where two million residents live under an Israeli blockade. Among other targets, it struck facilities belonging to Hamas’s «counterintelligence» service and the residence of Iyad Tayeb, an officer in the military wing of the Islamist movement.

Hamas announced yesterday the death of the head of its military wing in Gaza City, while Israel’s intelligence agency reported, for its part, that other senior members of the Islamist movement had also been killed.

The Israeli Air Force leveled a ten-story building that housed the offices of the Al-Aqsa TV station, which was established a few years ago by Hamas.

The most recent report from Gaza, released last night, stated that 67 people had been killed in Gaza—including 17 children—and nearly 400 had been injured.

At the UN

«In retaliation for the raid on the Al-Sorouk building and the death of a group of leaders,» Hamas fired more than 100 rockets at Israel last night. Several were intercepted by the "Iron Dome" anti-missile system.

With the latest rocket attacks, the number of rockets fired at Israeli territory by armed groups in the Gaza Strip has reached approximately 1,500. The death toll on the Israeli side has reached seven, including a six-year-old boy, while hundreds of people have been injured in just over two days.

Amid the ongoing escalation of hostilities, a third emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, in public this time, tomorrow, Friday.

During the first two video conferences, which were held behind closed doors, the U.S. opposed the adoption of a joint statement by the UN’s top body calling for a ceasefire, judging that such a move would be «counterproductive» at this stage, according to diplomats.

Washington, however, announced earlier that it would send a chargé d'affaires to Israel and the Palestinian Territories to call for «de-escalation,» while Moscow called for an emergency meeting of the Middle East Quartet (EU, Russia, U.S., UN).

«We're continuing»

However, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who spoke by phone with the U.S. president Joe Biden, he told him that he wanted to «continue» the strikes in order to undermine Hamas’s «military capabilities.».

Ο President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, which is headquartered in West Bank, amid scenes of protests, riots, and attacks against Israeli forces that left three people dead yesterday, Wednesday, he spoke with the head of U.S. diplomacy Anthony Blinken, whom he asked to help «put an end to the Israeli attacks.».

For his part, Mr. Blinken stated on Twitter that he had emphasized the «need to end the rocket attacks and de-escalate tensions.».

Israel and Hamas are heading toward a «full-scale war», warned Tor Wensland, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East, on Tuesday. If it does indeed break out, «it will be catastrophic, and it will be the ordinary people who will pay the price» in Gaza, where the unemployment rate stands at 50%, the Norwegian added.

Behind the scenes, the UN, Qatar, and Egypt are working to mediate, with the head of Egyptian diplomacy trying—in vain—to convince his Israeli counterpart —that it is essential to halt the strikes on the Gaza Strip.

On Monday night, Hamas launched its first barrage of rockets against Israel as a sign of «solidarity» with the Palestinians injured in clashes with Israeli police in Mosque Square, the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest site in Judaism in East Jerusalem, a part of the holy city that Israel occupies and has annexed, unlawfully under international law.

Although calm seemed to be returning to Mosque Square today, many cities became the scene of nighttime «riots.».

Supporters of the Israeli far right protested across the country, clashing with law enforcement as well as with Israeli Arabs in the Lond, in Haifa and elsewhere.

The country was shocked by the live television broadcast of the lynching of a man—who was believed by the perpetrators to be Arab—near Tel Aviv. The appalling footage shows a man being forcibly dragged out of his car and then repeatedly beaten by a mob until he loses consciousness.

Ο President Reuven Rivlin, seeing a risk of «civil war» in the clashes in cities with mixed Arab and Israeli populations, described incidents of this kind as «a barbaric attack against coexistence in the State of Israel.».

Prime Minister Netanyahu described as «unacceptable» what «has been happening in Israeli cities in recent days (…) »Nothing justifies the lynching of Arabs by Jews, nor of Jews by Arabs.", he said.

He demanded that troops be deployed on the streets to quell the riots, a move that the Defense Minister Benny Gantz. But Mr. Netanyahu, who speaks of a war «on two fronts,» persists.