Two new rockets were fired this Friday from the Palestinian enclave of Gaza towards Israel, after clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators, some fifty of whom were injured on the esplanade of the Mosques in East Jerusalem.
Since Monday, several rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip controlled by Hamas Islamists towards Israel, prompting Israeli air raids against the enclave. They caused no casualties and most of the projectiles were intercepted by the Israeli missile shield. “A rocket hit a field near the border with northern Gaza and another fell inside” the enclave, the Israeli army said on Twitter.
According to witnesses, one person was injured in Gaza after the rocket fell near his house.
Escalation
The violence comes in a context of escalation after four attacks in Israel between March 22 and April 7, which left 14 dead in total. Two of the attacks were perpetrated in the metropolis of Tel Aviv by Palestinians from the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
In the wake of these attacks, the Israeli army carried out several operations in the West Bank, while clashes multiplied between Israeli police and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part occupied and annexed by Israel. On Friday morning, Israeli forces reentered the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site and Judaism’s holiest site known as the Temple Mount, and Palestinian youths threw stones at them .
“Deeply worried”
Police say before dawn ‘masked rioters carrying Hamas flags’ threw rocks at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, located below the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem -East. The Palestinian Red Crescent said at least 57 Palestinians were injured, two seriously, in the clashes.
After clashes that left more than 200 Palestinians injured for a week, the Israeli authorities closed the crossing points this weekend allowing Palestinians from the West Bank to go to Jerusalem. But Palestinians managed to get there illegally. Thousands of faithful were able to make the midday prayer thanks to a lull on this third Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which coincided with the end of the celebrations of Passover, the Jewish Passover.
After the prayer, a mini-drone flew over the esplanade and fired tear gas at some of the faithful, creating scenes of panic, noted an AFP team. The police claimed to have used “means to disperse” a crowd which tried to damage one of its gatehouses.
Since the Tel Aviv attacks, 24 Palestinians including assailants have been killed in clashes or incidents in the West Bank with Israeli forces. “We are deeply concerned about the escalation of violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Israel over the past month,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Call for American intervention
The rocket attacks are the largest since the deadly 11-day war that pitted Hamas against Israel in May 2021 after weeks of clashes and tensions in Jerusalem. In power in Gaza under Israeli blockade, Hamas claims to want to defend the esplanade of the Mosques, access to which is controlled by the Jewish state.
The presence on the esplanade during Ramadan of many Jews, authorized to visit the place at specific times without praying there according to the status quo in force, and the deployment of police forces were widely perceived by Palestinians and several countries. of the region as a gesture of “provocation”.
Arab ministers gathered in Amman condemned “the Israeli attacks and violations against the worshipers of the Al-Aqsa mosque” located on the esplanade.
On Thursday, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Yaël Lempert, and the envoy in charge of Israeli-Palestinian relations, Hady Amr, met with officials from the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, who sits in West Bank.
Mr. Abbas “requested the urgent intervention of the American administration in order to put an end once and for all to the Israeli escalation”, according to a Palestinian official.