News
Israel responds to mortar fire on Gaza border
Mortar shells were fired at an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) outpost on the Gaza border on Thursday afternoon, prompting retaliatory strikes from the Israeli army and air force.
Small arms fire was directed at Israeli soldiers working on the border and this was followed by mortar fire. The IDF said no soldiers were injured but some light damage was caused to equipment. Train lines between the southern Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Sderot were temporarily suspended.
The IDF responded with tank fire and airstrikes that targeted two Palestinian Islamic Jihad and two Hamas military positions in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, three Gazans were lightly wounded in the Israeli bombing.
The IDF believes that yesterday’s mortar attack was carried out by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in retaliation for the destruction of one of its underground tunnels, intended to infiltrate into Israel, on 30 October, at least 14 Hamas and Islamic jihad operatives including two of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s top commanders were killed during the course of the operation.
An IDF spokesperson said: “This is the attack we were anticipating. We know exactly who personally stands behind this attack. When Islamic Jihad doesn’t shoot from the hip it is usually on order from Damascus. What happened here today is an attack that came a month after the tunnel assault. It does not look like a gut reaction.”
Kan Radio News reported this morning that Egyptian intelligence officials are holding talks with Islamic Jihad in order to prevent an escalation in violence. A website that is affiliated with Islamic Jihad reported that a senior Egyptian official spoke on the phone for a long time with its Deputy Leader Ziad Nakhleh.
Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth Alex Fishman says that Israeli Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot has instructed the IDF to destroy all cross-border tunnels by the end of 2018, and that therefore “the next explosion in a tunnel is presumably only a matter of time”. Fishman also cautioned that any Israeli retaliation from Gaza must be “painful enough to deter the other side” but without “igniting the entire sector”.