Palestinian militants fired hundreds of rockets from Gaza towards southern and central Israel while Israeli airstrikes targeted militants in the enclave on Wednesday, as both sides said they were preparing for wider conflict.
A group of Gaza militants including the enclave’s rulers Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both designated as terror groups by the US, took responsibility for the rocket fire. The militants said they had retaliated for Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday that killed senior Islamic Jihad commanders and civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Officials from Egypt and the UN said they had been working with Israeli and Palestinian leaders since Tuesday to broker a ceasefire, but neither side committed to ending hostilities.
“We are still in the thick of the campaign,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday night. “At these moments, our forces are forcefully striking the Gaza Strip and extracting a steep price from terrorist organisations.”
Hamas had mostly stayed out of battles between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad since a deadly Israel-Gaza conflict in 2021. The group’s decision to join the fray on Wednesday signalled the possibility of a more serious escalation between the two sides.
“Targeting civilian homes, encroaching on our people, and assassinating our men and heroes is a red line that will be confronted with all force. The enemy will pay dearly for it, God willing,” said a joint statement from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Gaza-based militant factions on Wednesday.
Read the article by Dov Lieber and Anas Baba in The Australian (from The Wall Street Journal).