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LAST UPDATE | 11 May 2021
A CONFRONTATION BETWEEN Israel and Hamas sparked by weeks of tensions in contested Jerusalem has escalated.
Israel unleashed new air strikes on Gaza, killing a number of militants and civilians, while militants barraged southern Israel with hundreds of rockets, killing two Israelis.
This evening, a 12-storey building in Gaza where several top Hamas commanders had offices collapsed after being hit by an Israeli air strike on Tuesday, AFP reporters said.
The building located near the seafront was completely destroyed following the strike, AFP reporters at the scene said.
Since sundown yesterday, 28 Palestinians – including 10 children and a woman – were killed in Gaza, most by air strikes, health officials there said.
The Israeli military said at least 16 of the dead were militants.
Two women were killed by rockets fired from Gaza that hit their homes in the southern city of Ashkelon – the first Israeli deaths in the current violence.
At least 10 other Israelis have been wounded since yesterday evening.
After those deaths, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said officials decided to “increase both the strength and rate of the strikes” against militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.
“Hamas will receive blows now that it didn’t expect,” he said.
Egypt was trying to broker a ceasefire, but the cycle of violence was gaining momentum.
Even before the two Israeli deaths, the Israeli military said it was sending troop reinforcements to the Gaza border and the defence minister ordered the mobilisation of 5,000 reserve soldiers.
The barrage of rockets and air strikes was preceded by hours of clashes on Monday between Palestinians and Israeli security forces, including dramatic confrontations at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a sacred site to both Jews and Muslims.
The current violence, like previous rounds, including the last intifada, or uprising, has been fuelled by conflicting claims over Jerusalem, which is at the emotional core of the long conflict.
In a sign of widening unrest, hundreds of residents of Arab communities across Israel staged overnight demonstrations denouncing the recent actions of Israeli security forces against Palestinians.
It was one of the largest protests by Palestinian citizens in Israel in recent years.
Israel and Hamas have fought three wars and numerous skirmishes since the militant group seized control of Gaza in 2007.
Recent rounds of fighting have usually ended after a few days, often helped by behind-the-scenes mediation by Qatar, Egypt and others.
An Egyptian official confirmed that the country was trying to broker a truce.
But the official said Israeli actions in Jerusalem had complicated those efforts.
A Palestinian security official confirmed the ceasefire efforts.
Israel carried out dozens of air strikes, including two that targeted high-rise apartment buildings where militants were believed to be hiding.
At midday, an air strike hit an apartment building in central Gaza City, sending terrified residents running into the street, including women and barefoot children.
The Islamic Jihad militant group confirmed that the strike killed three of its commanders.
An earlier air strike struck another high-rise in the city as people were conducting dawn prayers, killing a woman, her 19-year-old disabled son and another man, residents said.
Health officials confirmed the deaths.
Ashraf al-Kidra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, said a total of 28 people, including 10 children and the woman, were killed and 152 people were wounded.
He said Israel’s “relentless assault” was overwhelming the healthcare system, which has been struggling with a Covid-19 outbreak.
Political limbo
The escalation comes at a time of political limbo in Israel.
Netanyahu has been caretaker prime minister since an inconclusive parliamentary election in March.
He tried and failed to form a coalition government with his hard-line and ultra-Orthodox allies, and the task was handed to his political rivals last week.
One of those rivals is Israel’s defence minister, who is overseeing the Gaza campaign.
It was not clear whether the toxic political atmosphere is spilling over into military decision-making, though the rival camps have unanimously expressed support for striking Hamas hard.
The support of an Arab-backed party with Islamist roots is key for the anti-Netanyahu bloc’s efforts.
But the current tensions might deter the party’s leader, Mansour Abbas, from joining a coalition for now.
The sides have three more weeks to reach a deal.
The current round of violence in Jerusalem coincided with the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in mid-April.
Critics say heavy-handed police measures helped stoke nightly unrest, including a decision to temporarily seal off a popular gathering spot where Palestinian residents would meet after evening prayers.
Threat of eviction
Another flashpoint was the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where dozens of Palestinians are under threat of eviction by Jewish settlers.
Over the weekend, confrontations erupted at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which is the third holiest site of Islam and the holiest site in Judaism.
Over several days, Israel police fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets at Palestinians in the compound who hurled stones and chairs.
At times, police fired stun grenades into the carpeted mosque.
On Monday evening, Hamas began firing rockets from Gaza, setting off air raid sirens as far as Jerusalem.
From there on, the escalation was rapid.
Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, said Gaza militants fired more than 500 rockets at Israel, with about one-third falling short and landing in Gaza.
The rocket fire was so intense that Israel’s Iron Dome rocket-defence system appeared to be overwhelmed.
At midday, a barrage of some 10 rockets whizzed above the southern city of Ashdod, filling the skies with streaks of white smoke.
A rocket that hit an apartment building in the coastal Israeli city of Ashkelon injured six people, according to Israeli paramedic service Magen David Adom.
A building in Ashdod was also hit, lightly wounding four, Israeli police said.
Lt Col Conricus said the military hit 130 targets in Gaza, including two tunnels militants were digging under the border with Israel.
He did not address Gaza Health Ministry reports about the dead children.
In Gaza, most of the deaths were attributed to air strikes.
However, seven of the deaths were members of a single family, including three children, who died in an explosion in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.
It was not clear if the blast was caused by an Israeli air strike or errant rocket.
Dozens of mourners took part in the funeral of Hussein Hamad, an 11-year-old boy who was among the dead.
Israel struck scores of Gaza homes in its 2014 war with Hamas, arguing it was aiming at militants, but also killing many civilians.
The practice drew broad international condemnation at the time.
Israel’s tactics in Jerusalem have drawn angry reactions from the Muslim world.
Regional power house Saudi Arabia yesterday condemned what it said were attacks by Israeli forces against the sanctity of Al-Aqsa and the safety of its worshippers.
With reporting from AFP
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When will our government and the rest of the world put an end to this apartheid and genocide.
Heartbreaking to see this everyday from is rael
@Mr Bordello: Loadup our aircraft carriers and we’ll declare war on them right away—specifically at your request!
@John Mc Donagh: or do it your style and turn a blind eye to innocent people being evicted from their homes or killed.
It’s a time for politics not war.
@Mr Bordello: they’ve been using aid money to fire rockets at Israeli homes for years, why would other governments intervene now?
Hammas is a bit like the provos, beloved of misty eyed people in other places who keep.sending them money.
@John Mulligan: genuinely thought you smarter than that.
@Victor Feldman: 20 civilians dead in the last 48 hours including 9 children.
But hey they fired an improvised rocket at the best missile defense system in the world in response,so let’s condemn them only.
@Mr Bordello: Did you miss the bit that said about Hamas “The group possesses a vast arsenal of missiles and rockets capable of striking virtually anywhere in Israel.” Those missiles cost money, don’t dismiss them as “improvised”, and don’t pretend they were doing anything other than deliberately escalating the matter.
THAT SAID: I actually agree that the evictions, based on Ottoman era documents, are an affront against everything that is right. The fact that Arab Israelies, who do not consider themselves Palestinians, are opposed shows its a complete injustice. But Hamas is only trying to stir things up while using human shields.
@John Mulligan: John has not a clue, don’t be like John.
@Mr Bordello: They fired 300 rockets at a city during a single night. Hardly the same thing. They’re not guided rockets, but that’s what makes it truly terrorism. They come down indiscriminately and they do kill. Israelis are hiding in bomb shelters, and in addition to direct injuries and deaths, there are always indirect deaths caused by heart attacks and the like. The sirens in most areas give civilians a maximum of 15 seconds to get to a shelter.
I’m not saying Israel is completely in the right, and the police have been very heavy handed, but it is disingenuous to say they fired “an improvised rocket”.
@John Mulligan:
Rockets?
Ah you mean those home-made fireworks which rarely meet a target and have caused very little damage in Israel (the former home of those firing the fireworks).
Do you really think that Israel, a military and nuclear power, is afraid of a few rudimentary rockets? Of course not, but it does give them an opportunity to kill or injure a few more Palestinians, which after all is there main objective.
What would you do if you were being evicted from your home to make way for immigrants with no connection to the land except that “God” gave it to them? Bet you would make a few fireworks as well.
This trouble started on the first day of Ramadan when the Occuping forces cut the wires to the loud speakers of the Al Asqua mosque which normally call worshippers to prayer, they also unilaterally blocked access to The Damascus gate plaza.
Mr Netanyahu the only extremists threatening the public are your settlers how long can Isreal give the finger to the rest of the world. The United States should move its embassy back to Tel Aviv.
@Bala mc blaha: to be fair, Netanyahu isn’t using foreign aid money to fire rockets at random homes in Palestine.
@John Mulligan: nonsense the US Government give the Israeli government billions in aid every year
And for know how many weapons
@John Mulligan: No, he’s just bulldozing them instead. So much better.
@John Mulligan:
US aid to Israel: 3.2 billion US$ in fiscal year 2017 alone.
Israel is biggest recipient of US aid.
@John Mulligan: How do you classify US aid???
@Billy McNamara: How do you classify US aid???
Israel need to be stopped by any means necessary, so sick of the western world standing idly by while genocide is committed by an apartheid state.
@Rochelle: not just the Western world, their close neighbours don’t help them out either, unless of course there’s the possibility of something in it for them (1967/1973). Jordon I think has been the only sympathetic ear in the past.
Long as Israel has big brother USA to call on for support or to buy weapons off, peace or any sort of stability will never be achieved. And before somebody shouts I am not anti Israeli here, but they have no intention of finding peace with Palestinians as long as they get access to heavy weapons and even nuclear weapons development which they try to pretend they don’t have. But on the other side as long as groups like Hamas use any excuse to hit Israel, nothing will change.
@Niall Bonnar: the North was nothing like this and yes the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves, but as I said unless the USA was to threaten to withhold all the new toy weapons to Israel and even then they would likely go elsewhere for them, its hard to see how this ends. Cos Israel clearly doesn’t care what the UN or even EU thinks and the Arab league seem to wanna stay out of this entirely, so I don’t know where this ends unless the world unites as one
@Niall Bonnar: the IRA killed more people than anyone during the Troubles. It’s hardly a leg to stand on…
@Michael Healy: thats true
@Colin Heffernan: Look, I despise Hamas and the PLO, but these are still peoples homes. If some locals were acting up in our area how would you or I feel if we were told “Oh, just abandon your home and job and leave the country”. I don’t see how the Sheik Jerrah evictions are anything but an injustice, but there would be trouble during Ramadan whatever the Israelies did.
@On the right side: The bloke who says don’t live in the past but has an avatar of soldiers raising the butcher’s apron. Why start in 1969? Why not show the numbers for all of the 20th century? Why not from 1600 onwards?
@Fenrir Wolfganger: I’d move and get on with my life elsewhere. Life is not a dress rehearsal and all that.
@On the right side: You know this is really one group:
Loyalist Paramilitary Groups 1,027
British Forces 363
@Colin Heffernan: Fair enough.
@On the right side:
I have no idea why the IRA existed:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/06/ruc-erred-at-troubles-dawn-by-firing-on-flats-from-armoured-cars
I’m not saying firing rockets in to Israel is the right thing to do (its not), no more than terrorising a mosque is. But its amazing the number of people that have only come on here to condemn the rocket firing but haven’t had a comment over the last few days and articles on the treatment dished out by Israeli authorities.
@Tom Ripley: Ah, you’ve decided to come on the comments section after half dozen articles now that Hamas are involved. Well done.
@Tom Ripley:
The “using children as shields” was an Israeli invention which has been disproved by many NGOs present on the ground. Stop using it, it doesn’t work any more.
The terrorism is Israeli state terrorism against the native population of Palestine. The UN Charter gives the right to armed resistance of a military occupation, which is what the Palestinians have been living under for decades.
@Shedonny: what NGOs do you speak of.
The headline is very deceiving, just like the rest of the media outlets!! These rockets have been fired in retaliation Israel fired first. Also take a look at the land grabbing going on in the dead of night. Palestinians being driven out of their homes!!! The international community should be ashamed!! Once again a war is brewing and innocent Palestinians will die.
@James Grant: I’m currently reading a book called the (ethnic cleansing of Palestine) you should give it a try and maybe educate your self in a bit of history of how the partition of Palestine occurred and how is Israel has slowly over the years taken over more and more land. By the way the British never tidied up their affairs when they left leaving Palestinians to face the infestation of their lands alone.
@Andy mc Laughlin: imaging a jew living in New York yet to move to Israel has more rights than a Israeli Arab who’s family has lived in Israel/Palestine for 100s of years. Crazy.
@James Grant: ‘Under Israeli law, Jews who can prove a title from before the 1948 war that accompanied the country’s creation can claim back their Jerusalem properties. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs were displaced in the same conflict but no similar law exists for Palestinians who lost their homes in the city.’
@James Grant: wow what colour is the sky in your world ?
@James Grant: the embassy boys are busy today. They should be on the first plane back to Israel.
Que the Massive Overreaction, probably against unarmed civilians!
@Hugo McCann: Well, there you go, they get the response they fully expected, what a surprise!
Hamas’s fires a fire cracker. Israel takes out 20 people with a massive bomb killing 9 innocent kids. The end result will swell the ranks of Hamas. Family members hell bent on revenge
Which global newspaper has the independence, courage to run a headline accurately capturing the brutality being dished out daily for decades to natives in their homeland, by a so called first-world civilised state?
Starting and ending with something like this:
“A World that United in the 1930’s and 40’s to defend a downtrodden diaspora then on the receiving end of…
…turns it’s back, 80 years later, when the shoe is on the other foot”
Doing Zilch on this long-running humanitarian crisis, is no longer an option for 2020’s world leaders!
@Rory J Leonard:
You are right, the media are portraying this as “clashes” between two equals, when it is a David vs. Goliath situation, nuclear power Israel against people without an army, navy, tanks, airport, seaport, who have to resort to home-made rockets as they have nothing else.
Here is an interesting video on how the attack on Palestinians is being reported, especially by the agencies such as Reuters etc. Shows what the headlines should actually be.
Abbey Martin has released her 2019 documentary,
Gaza fights for freedom, on YouTube,
Anyone willing to condemn the firing of unguided rockets into Israel to kill innocent Jewish civilians? Hamas uses the deaths of their own people, sadly including young children, as propaganda fodder. They respect neither Jew nor Arab. Their terror cause trumps any concern for human life. Restraint is needed now on both sides before another intifada erupts.. which Israel will fight and will win again.
It’s all about money and influence and Israel have have plenty of both ..So the rich does little wrong and poor people can’t change anything
No one speaks about the source of the problem. Its IRAN pulling the strings for years with their proxy war against Israel. Then we have blinkered Biden and Co sitting down with these “J-rks ” who are causing mayhem in the middle east, and will continue to do so.
It’s all about money and influence and Israel have lots of both..so the rich do little wrong and the poor can do nothing about it
It’s so predictable and tiresome to see all the pro Palestinian nonsense here. If we had an armed group of fundamentalist terrorists committed to annihilating us, cancelling our state and firing missiles indiscriminately at us, would we accept it? There are so many wrongs on both sides but this anti-Israeli cliched argument sounds childish. There is something worryingly anti-Semitic about it too. There are so many human rights issues to concern ourselves with around the world but for some reason, Hamas, the PLO and the rest of them get most attention from Ireland. We sound like Arts students with Che Guevara t-shirts. It’s embarrassing. If I had to choose which side I’d like to have living in Ireland, I know it would be the Israelis.
@muirhill121: that’s your opinion but you don’t speak for all
@muirhill121: exactly but it’s a sinn fein driven anti semitic drivel being feed to the brainwashed constituents that vote for them and they don’t fact check or read into the actual problems there they just spout their usual rhetoric
@Gavin Delves: I think that’s a good definition of an individual’s opinion! I am not suggesting I speak for all but when Dublin City Council raised the Palestinian flag, the certainly were not speaking for me. The throwaway Nazi references in many of the comments only show that I am correct to raise anti-Semitism as an issue here.
@muirhill121: It is embarrassing and THE JOURNAL fuels it by removing comments that oppose the anti Israel narrative.
@muirhill121: Wow. Think for a minute why it’s ‘predictable’? Predictable and nonsense to have sympathy for a people who have had their land stolen from them by an occupying foreign invader. Who have been oppressed and basically live in an apartheid state. And what little of their native land they have left is now being systematically torn from them piece by piece in what can only be described as a land grab. Then to play the race card! It’s a human issue for gods sake. About doing the right thing. ‘State’ ha ha they’ve conjured up an illegal state out of thin air. Might as well got it on the back of a cornflakes packet!
Shame on you Israel, Where is your moral compass ?
@Bala mc blaha:
Israel doesn’t have a moral compass, it has a state ideology, Zionism, which is based on the replacement of the native population of Palestine with Jewish immigrants.
Everything it has done since 1948 is perfectly in line with this ideology.
Israeli s will never learn no wonder there hated doing exactly what happened to them in ww2
@Gavin Delves: if you think that anything comparable to the Holocaust is happening in Gaza, you need to read some history.
For a people that experienced such hatred and hardship during recent history to apply the same hatred and hardship on other people seems inexplicable to me.
@Graham O’Brien: in Freudian terms it is called identification. Which, simply put, is to say the traumatically oppressed learn to act like the oppressor.
74 comments as I post and not one mention of where this tit for tat retaliation will end up in the next 10 years. Nuclear weapons…
From blatant contradictory accounts over recent days, it is clear that spokesmen for the Israeli Government and the IDF., are straight out of the Bible. They are ‘whited-sepulchres’.
The Journal has twice taken down a comparison I made between the disproportionate Israeli retaliation on civilians and the same tactic used by an occupying force in Europe in WW2. When I requested an explanation there was no response.
@Michael Powell: You should not need any explanation. The Holocaust was the systematic extermination of c. 6m Jewish, Gypsy, Gay, Handicapped and other “undesirable” people. It involved horrific mass murder, torture, forced labour, starvation, gassing and many other barbaric practices. Comparing it in any way with the conflict on the West Bank is offensive and anti-Semitic. Hate speech needs to be called out and taken down.
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