The Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip resumed firing rockets today, on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the Jewish state and awaiting progress on the Egyptian ceasefire proposal.
After a relatively quiet night, the Palestinian Health Ministry announced the deaths of two men, aged 19 and 32, in the northern occupied West Bank, who it claimed were killed by Israeli soldiers in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, where the army carried out an attack in the morning before withdrawing, the AFP news agency reported.
Fatah, the movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas, claimed that both were members of its armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Witnesses in the Gaza Strip reported several Israeli shelling attacks on uninhabited areas east of Gaza City and in the north of the territory.
As reported by the Israeli aviation, four command centers of the Islamic Jihad group were bombed this Saturday in the Gaza Strip. The facilities were being used by the Palestinian fundamentalist group to launch projectiles into Israeli territory, they said.
In Israel, rocket warning sirens sounded several times starting at 6 a.m. local time (midnight in Argentina) in areas bordering the Palestinian enclave.
The clashes take place one day before the 75th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, on May 14, 1948. However, the commemoration was celebrated last April by the Hebrew authorities, which are guided by the Jewish calendar.
The new wave of violence between Israelis and Palestinians began on Tuesday with Israeli attacks against Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group considered a “terrorist organization” by Israel, the European Union (EU) and the United States.
According to the latest balance of the health authorities of the Palestinian territory, 33 people have died since the beginning of the offensive.
Among them are several fighters and six Islamic Jihad commanders, as well as members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) armed group, as well as civilians and children.
An 80-year-old woman in Israel also died, according to the Ynet news page.
Egypt, the traditional mediator between the two parties, is working to achieve a truce, while international calls are multiplying to end this escalation of violence, the most serious between the armed movements in Gaza and Israel since August 2022.
According to a Palestinian source close to the negotiations, “Egypt presented (on Friday) a new ceasefire proposal on Friday night.”
“The Palestinian side will study it and Egypt is also waiting for a response” from Israel, the same source said.
Israeli public television reported, in turn, that an “improved” ceasefire proposal submitted by Egypt was broadcast to Israel.
The United States yesterday “strongly” condemned the firing of rockets into Israel from Gaza, and “insisted on the urgency of reaching a ceasefire.”
Meanwhile, a source from the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an ally of Israel after the normalization of relations in 2020, on Friday “firmly” repudiated the “recent Israeli aggressions against the Gaza Strip, which left numerous victims among innocent civilians.”
According to the army, about a thousand rockets were fired at Israel, of which about 300 were intercepted by the anti-aircraft defense system, while the inhabitants of the areas near Gaza have been living in shelters for four days.
The Gaza Strip is an impoverished Palestinian territory where 2.3 million people live. Since 2007, when the Islamist Hamas movement took full control of the enclave, it has been subject to a strict Israeli blockade.
The territory has been the scene of several wars with Israel since 2008.
In August 2022, three days of clashes between Israel and Islamic Jihad killed 49 Palestinians, including at least 19 children, according to the UN. More than a thousand rockets were fired from Gaza towards Israel, leaving three wounded.
Source: Ambito
