After a night of crossfire, Israel and Islamic Jihad reached a truce yesterday morning that lasted until press time. The latest escalation between the Palestinian armed organizations and the Israeli forces, the second in less than a month, had begun on Tuesday following the death of a Palestinian prisoner -and a leading member of the aforementioned Palestinian Islamist organization-, Khader Adnan, in a Israeli prison after having spent 87 days on hunger strike.
The agreement between Islamic Jihad – the entity, operational since 1987, is considered a terrorist by the United States and the European Union – and Israel, in force since four in the morning on Wednesday, is the result of mediation by the governments of Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations, according to Palestinian sources. The Israeli Defense Forces decreed a “complete return to routine” in the areas near Gaza yesterday. Neither of the two parties has shown interest in continuing the escalation in recent hours, although no one dares to call a definitive ceasefire either.
During the early hours of Wednesday, Palestinian militants -both the commanders of Islamic Jihad and Hamas claimed responsibility for the attacks- launched dozens of rockets in the direction of Israeli territory in retaliation for the death of Adnan, the first Palestinian prisoner to die after a strike of hunger in more than three decades, according to the Reuters agency. Meanwhile, Israeli air force planes were hitting targets inside the Gaza Strip, including the areas of Al-Safina, Al-Baydar and Al-Zaytoun, according to Al Jazeera. According to the balance of the Israeli authorities, Islamic Jihad and Hamas launched a total of 104 projectiles towards Israeli soil between Tuesday and Wednesday.
According to Palestinian government sources, a 58-year-old citizen lost his life when he was struck at his home by debris caused by one of the Israeli bombardments, directed according to Tel Aviv against a Hamas training camp in northern Gaza. Five more people were injured. In Israel, projectile launches caused
serious injuries to a foreign citizen while working on a construction site whose exact location has not been disclosed.
At the close of this edition, the Israeli authorities had not yet handed over the body of the deceased terrorist. Adnan, who was 45 years old, was found unconscious in his cell at Nitzan prison – located in the Israeli town of Ramla – early Tuesday morning, according to Israeli prison sources. Although the Islamic Jihad leader was rushed to a medical center on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, doctors could only certify his death. From the Palestinian side, the Israeli authorities are accused of medical negligence as the cause of death.
The latest crossfire around Gaza has highlighted the existing tensions within the government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. The Security Minister and leader of the ultra-conservative Jewish Power, Itamar Ben-Gvir, described the response of the Israeli forces to the latest Palestinian offensive as “weak” and absented himself from the plenary session of the Knesset held yesterday afternoon. Ben-Gvir went to the town of Sederot, located along the Gaza border, to hold a meeting with members of his party, where he went further and threatened to leave the coalition executive and boycott every vote in Parliament until their opinions are “influential” on security matters. For his part, Netanyahu did not take long to react to the pulse of his Minister of National Security, to which he blurted out that “if [la respuesta en Gaza] It is not acceptable to him, he does not have to continue in the Government”.
