Israeli defense officials on Monday warned that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad appeared to be planning to conduct a large-scale terror attack on the Gaza border in order to derail ongoing cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, according to two Hebrew media reports.
The Trump Administration will allow Israel to annex portions of the West Bank and split the Gaza Strip from the West Bank so that it can be a state of its own, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday.
Militants fired five rockets from Gaza into Israel early Sunday, the Israeli military said, following a day of Palestinian mass protests along the Israel-Gaza perimeter fence. Despite the rocket fire, the Kerem Shalom and Erez border crossings – which have been closed since last Monday when a Gaza rocket destroyed a house in central Israel – were reopened on Sunday morning.
Israel prepared for a broad military campaign in Gaza Thursday, as Egypt worked behind the scenes to ensure that Palestinians marking the one year anniversary of the Great March of Return this weekend do not spark a new IDF-Hamas war.
As the Israeli military continued its preparations for a possible outbreak of violence at protests along the Gaza border planned for Saturday, an Egyptian delegation reportedly told Hamas that any mistake it makes could lead to war.
The cross-border fighting between Israel and Hamas, which resumed late Tuesday evening, continued into early Wednesday, with Israeli military striking several Hamas military positions in Gaza, while air-raid sirens sounded in southern Israeli communities.
The Israeli military began bombing targets throughout the Gaza Strip on Monday evening, some 12 hours after a rocket fired from the coastal enclave slammed into a home in central Israel, injuring seven people.
Israel has deployed two infantry and armored divisions to southern Israel and has begun a limited call up for reservists in the intelligence and air defense corps following rocket fire on central Israel Monday morning, the IDF said.
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip struck a residential building in central Israel early Monday morning, injuring at least seven people, including two infants, and leveling the structure, officials said.
An Israeli tank struck a Hamas military post in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, hours after an airborne explosive device apparently launched from the Palestinian enclave exploded in Israel.
Hamas is facing the biggest demonstrations yet against its 12-year rule of the Gaza Strip, with hundreds of Palestinians taking to the streets in recent days to protest the dire living conditions in the blockaded territory.
A lawmaker from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party said on Saturday that Israel was prepared to launch a military offensive in the Gaza Strip ahead of upcoming general elections ‘if need be,’ as the premier continued to take flak from figures across the political spectrum over his handling of violence against Israel from the Palestinian territory.
Israeli warplanes hit over 100 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip in a night of strikes after two rockets were fired at Tel Aviv for the first time since the 2014 war, the Israel Defense Forces said.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip should not assume that Israel won’t respond to their recent attacks with a major military operation in the territory just because of approaching elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday, warning that the country will do whatever is necessary to restore security to southern communities.
Tensions between Israel and Hamas are surging again, following a string of attacks from Gaza and Israeli retaliation airstrikes.
Israeli planes struck targets in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, the latest tit-for-tat cross-border fighting that has set the restive region on edge.
‘Declaring Al-Asqa TV a terror organization is a precise labeling,’ said Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a media watchdog group, commenting on Netanyahu’s decision to declare the Hamas-affliated Al-Aqsa TV channel a terrorist organization on Wednesday.
A top EU court on Wednesday rejected an appeal by Hamas for the bloc to delist the Palestinian group as a terrorist organization to allow it to regain access to frozen assets.
The Palestinian terror group Hamas warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday against any military ‘adventure’ in the Gaza Strip ahead of Israeli elections next month, as tensions spiraled along the restive frontier with Israel.
The Israel Air Force carried out airstrikes on several targets in the Gaza Strip Tuesday night, after balloons with explosives were flown into Israel earlier in the day.