Israel has continued to escalate tensions in the Middle East and has responded to the rocket fire from Lebanon – the largest in the last 17 years – with airstrikes against Hamas posts in the Gaza Strip early this Friday morning.
The attacks, which targeted underground tunnels and sites used for weapons production, were ordered after a late-night emergency meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet. “Israel’s response, tonight and in the future, will have a high price for our enemies,” warned the Israeli president.
Israel’s attacks on Gaza caused property damage but no injuries, according to Hamas officials. Islamic Jihad, a smaller group, claimed responsibility for the rockets from Lebanon.
The Israeli army originally urged civilians in the south to stay close to the shelters. However, a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank Jordan Valley left two Israeli women dead and another seriously injured, the army said at noon.
A spokesman for the Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service specified that the incident, which occurred on a road near the West Bank town of Hamra, is being investigated as a “terrorist attack”, terminology used for attacks perpetrated by Palestinians.
The fatalities are two sisters in their 20s, while the injured woman is her 45-year-old mother, all of them settlers residing in the Efrat settlement, near Jerusalem.
This bombardment coincides with an escalation of tension between Israelis and Palestinians, which began on Wednesday with clashes between the Police and Muslim faithful in the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and continued with important exchanges of fire with Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip and in southern Lebanon.
No Palestinian group has claimed responsibility for the attack on the three settlers, but the Islamist group Hamas hailed it as “a natural response to the crimes of the occupation in Al Aqsa and the barbaric aggression against Lebanon and the unyielding Gaza.”
Since Wednesday, more than 60 projectiles have been fired into Israeli territory from Gaza and 36 from Lebanon, while Israel has shelled targets of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement both in the Strip and on Lebanese territory.
In parallel, the tension continues to be high in the occupied West Bank, where this morning there had already been a shooting attack against an Israeli soldier, who was slightly injured.
All this occurs on the third Friday of Ramadan -which coincides with Pesach (Jewish Passover) and Good Friday- a particularly tense day in Jerusalem, when hundreds of thousands of Muslims go to pray at the Al Aqsa mosque, where this morning there were minor incidents with the police.
