For the second time in just three days the Israeli Air Force stuck the Gaza Strip on Thursday evening following rockets being fired into Israel continuing a new wave of violence that has complicated peace talks.
The Israeli military said that it had attacked a weapons manufacturing plant and a weapons storage facility. Israeli aircraft scored direct hits on a “terror infrastructure” in Gaza according to the military.
Witnesses in Gaza said the F-16 fighter jets had hit an open space in northern Gaza City and a training facility south of the city. Gaza medical officials said one resident suffered minor injuries. The airstrikes came after two rockets landed near the Israeli city of Ashkelon on Thursday, one just after midnight and the other that evening. Neither caused injuries or damage.
On Tuesday, a Palestinian sniper fatally shot an Israeli who was repairing the security fence bordering Gaza prompting airstrikes, tank and infantry fire that killed a small child in Gaza and wounded several of her relatives. The exchanges are the most significant since a cease-fire agreement between Israel and the militant Hamas faction that controls the Gaza Strip was signed in November of 2012 after eight days of intense cross-border violence. Earlier Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Hamas would be held responsible even if other groups, like Islamic Jihad, actually fired the rockets from Gaza. “We will strike at those who attack us, and at those who support them,” he said at an air force graduation ceremony just hours before the evening attack.
Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, said in a statement that Gaza had become “a heinous sanctuary for rocket terrorism,” adding, “We will not tolerate daily aggression from the Hamas-ruled territory and are morally obligated to act against those threatening our communities, our towns and our cities.”
In addition to the airstrikes, Israel closed its lone commercial crossing into Gaza on Wednesday halting the transfer of badly needed fuel and preventing farmers from exporting strawberries. The director of Gaza’s sole power plant, which sputtered back to life on December 15 thanks to a donation of diesel from Qatar after being shuttered for six weeks, said it would go dark again by 6 a.m. on Friday. “We get fuel day by day,” said Rafik Maliha, the plant’s director. Gaza’s 1.7 million Palestinian residents had been without electricity for up to 18 hours a day when the power plant was not operating and some sewage pumping stations were overflowing into the streets.
The increase of violence in recent days raises new questions concerning the American-brokered peace negotiations that started in July. It also raises the question whether Israel will release the 26 long-serving Palestinian prisoners early next week as scheduled which would have been the third of four such releases. Despite pleas from Washington and European envoys, Israel was expected to couple the release with an announcement of further construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank which is something Palestinian leaders have said threatens the viability of the talks.