Israeli forces attacked the Gaza Strip Tuesday morning after a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave into Israel, witnesses and the Islamist Hamas movement reported.
Israeli aircraft launched the strikes in the southern Gaza Stripwitnesses said, while Hamas’s armed wing said it opened fire on Israeli planes.
“Congratulations to the resistance men who met the warplanes with our air defense,” Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesman, said in a statement. He claimed that Israeli forces attacked “empty places”.
Witnesses and security sources in the Gaza Strip No injuries were reported in the attacks.carried out after the firing of a rocket from that Palestinian territory towards Israel and which was intercepted by the anti-missile system “Iron Dome”.
“In retaliation for that attack, Israeli army warplanes attacked weapons factories of the Hamas terror organization in the Gaza Strip”, indicated the Israeli army.
The events occurred after weekend violence in and around the Esplanade of the Mosquesthe third holy site in Islam and the first holy site in 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 on the same day, Palestinian youths were arrested after throwing stones at Israeli civilian buses near the site.
Last year, fighting in Jerusalem at the same time of year led Hamas to fire salvos of rockets from Gaza into Israel, which responded by bombing Palestinian territory, causing 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 May 2021 war.
And second, because in case of conflict, the new Israeli government risks suspending the thousands of work permits granted in recent months to Gazan workersa territory under lockdown with a local unemployment rate close to 50 percent.
Islamic Jihad, the main Palestinian armed Islamist group after Hamas, but which unlike Hamas does not administer the Gaza Strip, threatened on Monday with a new military escalation.
“We cannot keep silent about what is happening in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank,” said Ziad Al Nakhale, head of Islamic Jihad, whose movement has thousands of fighters and rockets in Gaza, according to Israeli intelligence.
The recent incidents on the Mosque Grounds 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 Israel’s “illegal and provocative violations”.
Jordan, linked to Israel by a peace treaty since 1994, administers the Temple Mount, where the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are located, but access to it is controlled by Israel.
(With information from AFP)
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Source-www.infobae.com