It took thirty-five hours for Islamic Jihad to respond to the assassination by the Jewish state, Tuesday, May 9, of three of its commanders in Gaza. Arousing unprecedented tension in Israel, the Palestinian movement ended up launching, on Wednesday May 10, at the start of the afternoon, a major barrage of rockets towards the south of the country, and a few salvoes towards Tel Aviv, 70 kilometers north of the coastal enclave.
By Thursday morning, more than 500 rockets had been fired from Gaza. Three-quarters penetrated Israeli airspace, and 150 were intercepted by the Iron Dome and David’s Sling defense systems, successfully tested for the first time. Three people were injured running for cover. The strikes carried out since Tuesday by the Israeli air force against the Palestinian sand strip, under blockade since 2007, and from which no one can leave during the fighting, have left 25 dead, including at least ten civilians, relatives and neighbors of the three leaders of Islamic Jihad.
The Israeli government in no way claims to have ignored the presence of these civilians. Following a doctrine formalized in the mid-2000s, which postulates a massive and pre-emptive use of force, he considers this proportion of civilian casualties acceptable, given the importance of his targets. Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi hailed a “precise action that harms terrorist targets while minimizing harm to uninvolved parties”.
Reduce movement abilities
In Gaza, the victims include the president of Al-Wafa hospital, Jamal Khaswan, his wife and their 19-year-old son, Youssef, who was studying to follow in his father’s footsteps, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. the man. Their baby girl, Miral, was taken to Gaza’s main hospital. Two young women were also killed, Dania Adas, 19, and her sister Eman, 17, along with two of the Jihad commanders’ wives, and three of their children.
Israel chose to strike two operational officials from the north and south of the enclave, and a man in charge of links with armed groups in the West Bank, in order to reduce the movement’s capacities and put an end to its sporadic strikes. “We are trying to prevent further escalation from taking place”said Wednesday, a spokesman for the army, Daniel Hagari.
Outside of periods of open conflict, such killings are rare. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered them in 2012 – sparking a war in Gaza – and then in 2019. For a week, he had been under pressure from his far-right government partners to respond more harshly to the hundreds of rockets fired by Islamic Jihad on May 2. The movement reacted to the death in an Israeli prison of one of its political executives, Khader Adnan, after eighty-seven days of hunger strike.
You have 49.16% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.