Israeli forces attacked the Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning after a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave into Israel, witnesses and the Islamist movement Hamas reported.
Israeli aircraft launched the attacks in the south of the Gaza Strip, witnesses said, while the armed wing of Hamas said it opened fire on Israeli planes.
“Congratulations to the men of the resistance who confronted the fighter jets with our air defense,” Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesman, said in a statement. He assured that Israeli forces attacked “empty sites”.
Witnesses and security sources in the Gaza Strip reported no injuries in the attacks, carried out following the firing of a rocket from that Palestinian territory into Israel and which was intercepted by the “Iron Dome” anti-missile system.
“In retaliation for that attack, Israeli army warplanes attacked weapons factories of the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip,” the Israeli army said.
The events occurred after the violence of the weekend in and around the Esplanade of Mosques, the third sacred site of Islam and the first holy place of Judaism, where more than 170 people were injured, mostly Palestinians.
On Sunday, new clashes broke out in and around this sacred place, which some Jews had visited, which was considered an affront by some Muslims. And that same day young Palestinians were arrested after throwing stones at Israeli civilian buses near the site.
Last year, clashes in Jerusalem at the same time of year led Hamas to launch rocket salvos from Gaza into Israel, which responded by shelling Palestinian territory, prompting an 11-day war.
According to Israeli security sources and analysts, Hamas - which approved the recent attacks in Israel - does not want a war now.
Firstly because the military capabilities of the Islamist movement were affected by the war in May 2021.
And secondly, because in the event of conflict, the new Israeli government risks suspending the thousands of work permits granted in recent months to workers in Gaza, a territory under blockade with a local unemployment rate close to 50 percent.
Islamic Jihad, the main Palestinian armed Islamist group after Hamas, but unlike Hamas, does not administer the Gaza Strip, threatened a new military escalation on Monday.
“We cannot continue to remain silent about what is happening in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank,” said Ziad Al Nakhalé, head of Islamic Jihad, whose movement has thousands of fighters and rockets in Gaza, according to Israeli intelligence.
Recent incidents on the Esplanade of Mosques have also cooled relations between Israel and Jordan, which summoned the Israeli chargé d'affaires on Monday and handed him a letter of protest demanding an end to the “illegal and provocative Israeli violations”.
Jordan, linked to Israel by a peace treaty since 1994, administers the Esplanade of Mosques, where the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are located, but access to this place is controlled by Israel.
(With information from AFP)
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