After days of fighting over Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, Israel escalated its battle on Friday by launching rare airstrikes on Lebanon and bombarding the Gaza Strip.
There were indications that both sides were attempting to contain violence later in the day. By morning, fighting on Israel’s northern and southern borders stopped, and the noontime prayers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque were peaceful.
However, a tragic reminder of the explosive situation was provided by a Palestinian shooting incident that murdered two ladies close to an Israeli settlement in the West Bank that is currently under Israeli occupation.
Following an exceptionally heavy rocket barrage from southern Lebanon that analysts described as the most dangerous cross-border fighting since Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah rebels in Lebanon in 2006, early morning Israeli strikes were launched.
The raid by Israeli police on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem earlier in the week, which caused turmoil in the conflicted city and condemnation throughout the Arab world, sparked the outbreak of violence.
The Israeli attacks appeared to be intended to prevent attracting Hezbollah, the Shiite organization backed by Iran that Israel views as its most immediate threat.
The Israeli military claimed that its airplanes destroyed facilities belonged to Palestinian militants whom it blamed for launching the almost thirty rockets that landed on Thursday in open spaces and northern Israeli cities.
Yet, the Israeli military asserted that Hezbollah, which controls a sizable portion of southern Lebanon, was aware of the Palestinian militants’ actions.
Although no significant injuries were reported, numerous residents of the southern Lebanese town of Qalili, mainly Syrian refugees, claimed to have suffered only minor wounds.
“I immediately gathered my wife and children and got them out of the house,” said Qalili resident Bilal Suleiman, who was jolted awake by the bombing.
An Associated Press photographer claims that a herd of sheep was killed when Israeli rockets targeted an open area close to the Rashidiyeh Palestinian refugee camp.
At the neighboring village of Maaliya, further airstrikes damaged an irrigation system that supplied water to orchards, a bridge, and a power transformer.
Israel’s forces attacked what it claimed were Hamas weapons production facilities and underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip. Hamas is the militant organization in charge of the Palestinian enclave.
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According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, residents examined the damage caused by Israeli strikes, which included harm to a children’s hospital in Gaza City.
Israelis living along the southern border of Israel came out of their bomb shelters after the retaliatory attacks. One rocket landed in the nearby town of Sderot, sending shrapnel slicing through a house, while most missiles that managed to enter Israeli territory struck open regions.
On either side of the southern border, no casualties were reported.
The Israeli military said everyone wanted to avoid a full-blown conflict. “Quiet will be answered with quiet,” said spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht.
In the area, tensions remained high. According to Israeli doctors and officials, a Palestinian gun incident in the West Bank near an Israeli community in the Jordan Valley resulted in the deaths of two sisters in their 20s and a critical injury to their 45-year-old mother.
According to Oded Revivi, the settlement’s mayor, the three victims were citizens of the Israeli settlement of Efrat, which is close to the Palestinian city of Bethlehem.
According to Revivi, the kids’ father witnessed the assault while traveling in a car behind his wife and daughters. Medical personnel reportedly removed the injured woman from the wrecked automobile, which appeared to have been pushed off the road.
The Israeli soldiers claimed to be looking for people responsible for the incident and set up barricades nearby. No violent group instantly took ownership.
Although the attack was ” in retaliation for the crimes committed by Israel in the West Bank and the Al-Aqsa mosque,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem praised it.
Al-Aqsa, a holy site in Jerusalem and a flashpoint for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is located on a hilltop that Muslims and Jews revere. The confrontations at the complex also led to an escalation in 2021 that resulted in an 11-day war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas leadership.
For Friday’s noontime prayers, which concluded without incident, more than 130,000 worshippers flooded the compound.
Chaos broke out at one of the esplanade’s entrances before morning prayers when Israeli police stormed the area with batons as they charged hundreds of Palestinian worshipers trying to cram into the location while chanting praises for Hamas.
A large-scale protest against Israel was conducted on the limestone courtyard an hour after worshippers had finished praying, as seen in films, with Palestinians raising their fists and yelling anti-Israel slogans. Tensions increased during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan when Israeli police entered the camp.
Security troops entered the sacred compound after prayers in response to “masked suspects” who threw rocks against cops at one of the gates, according to police, who declined to comment on the earlier beatings.
Israeli forces supervise the region, although Islamic and Jordanian officials are in charge of running the enclave.
For Jerusalem’s Old City, which was bustling with tourists from all over the world on Friday, the upheaval comes at a precarious time.
For Good Friday, Christians followed in the footsteps of Jesus, Jews observed Passover for a week, and Muslims observed Ramadan by praying and fasting.
The latest round of unrest started on Wednesday as Israeli police entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque twice, beating Palestinians severely in one instance before they threw rocks and fireworks in retaliation.
This sparked an extraordinary and significant escalation on Thursday, including rocket fire from Gaza, a bombardment from southern Lebanon, and an Israeli reaction.
The “deliberate Israeli bombing and aggression” in the south, which it denounced as “a flagrant violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty,” was the subject of instructions given to Lebanon’s mission to the United Nations in New York, according to the foreign ministry on Friday.
The West Bank remained tense even as a tense quiet developed at the Gaza and Lebanon borders. There has been an increase in violence in recent months, with Palestinian health experts stating that the beginning of 2023 will be the worst for Palestinians in 20 years.
An Associated Press count shows that Israeli fire has killed close to 90 Palestinians in the West Bank since the beginning of the year. During that period, Palestinian attacks on Israelis claimed the lives of 16 persons, 15 of whom were civilians.
Israel claims that the majority of Palestinian victims were militants. But, persons who were not participating in the altercations and stone-throwing teenagers opposing police intrusions have also died.
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