‘TOWARDS FULL-SCALE WAR’
‘WE ARE TALKING ABOUT LIFE AND DEATH HERE’: NETANYAHU
LOD, ISRAEL • Israel’s prime minister declared a state of emergency Wednesday in response to riots spreading across the country that led to schools, synagogues and cars being set ablaze in Jewish neighbourhoods, as the president blamed the chaos on a “bloodthirsty Arab mob.”
A curfew was imposed in the central city of Lod, and the wave of violence spread to cities including Haifa, Acre and Ramla, as Hamas fired hundreds of rockets and Israel continued to bomb the crowded coastal enclave of Gaza.
The death toll was nearly 60 by late Wednesday night, including six Israelis and at least 53 Palestinians. About 16 children, 14 of them Palestinian, were believed to have died, as well as several top Hamas commanders. On Wednesday night, a six-year-old boy was killed by a Hamas rocket attack on the city of Sderot in southern Israel.
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza were expected to continue, as Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, warned that the operation was far from over.
Benny Gantz, the defence minister, said that Israeli strikes would not stop until there was “complete quiet” from militants in Gaza.
Israeli police chiefs were already drawing comparisons between the riots and severe unrest in 2000 that heralded the Second Intifada, a mass Palestinian uprising against the Jewish state that lasted for five years.
In Lod, a city with a significant Arab Israeli population, Jewish families were clearing debris from the fire-ravaged interior of a school as the stench of burned rubber and plastic wafted through the air yesterday morning.
The building had been attacked with Molotov cocktails by a group of about 30 masked Arabs, according to Jewish families in the area.
“I am a former soldier, I was not scared then, but when I looked out the window I knew that if I went outside I would be killed,” Yedidya Harris, 28, a father of two, told The Daily Telegraph.
At least a dozen cars, a synagogue and a school were torched during the riots overnight on Tuesday.
“The sight of the pogroms in Lod and the disturbances across the country by an incited and bloodthirsty Arab mob, injuring people, damaging property and even attacking sacred Jewish spaces is unforgivable,” Reuven Rivlin, the Israeli president, said in an unusually strong statement Wednesday.
“We have not seen this kind of violence since October 2000,” Kobi Shabtai, the Israeli police chief, said of Lod, referring to Arab unrest that preceded the Second Intifada.
During a visit to Lod Wednesday, Netanyahu said: “We will not tolerate this; we need to restore calm. If this isn’t an emergency situation, I don’t know what is. We are talking about life and death here.”
The nationwide unrest was spurred on by ongoing fighting between Hamas in Gaza and Israel.
Israel announced Wednesday that it had destroyed weapons manufacturing sites used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.
It also said that a separate strike had killed several high-ranking Hamas commanders, including Bassem Issa, the head of the Gaza City military division. His death was confirmed by Hamas.
Israel carried out hundreds of strikes targeting Hamas in response to an unprecedented barrage of 130 rockets that were fired from Gaza at Tel Aviv and the surrounding area on Tuesday.
Gazans posted footage online of huge explosions in urban areas, as plumes of smoke rose over the city. Many people had to be rescued from the remains of smouldering buildings.
Israel had seven casualties from Hamas rocket fire that killed one woman in a suburb south of Tel Aviv, two women in the southern city of Ashdod, and two people in Lod.
In Rishon Lezion, the Tel Aviv suburb, the victim’s house had been caved in by a rocket that set several cars in the street ablaze.
Konstantin Kandaurov, 48, a software engineer, said that he was watching a football match in his living room when he heard the sirens screaming. “As soon as the explosion (happened) the cars started burning,” he said.
The Israeli military said that more than 1,000 rockets had been fired by Hamas toward Israel since their operation against Hamas, known as Guardians of the Walls, began on Monday. Hamas said that the attack was partly in retaliation for hundreds of Palestinians injured during clashes with Israeli police at the revered al-aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem.
Another factor that escalated tensions was an Israeli plan to evict about a dozen Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, and replace them with settlers. A court hearing due to take place on Monday was postponed after the al-aqsa clashes. A new date is to be set.
As world leaders expressed growing alarm, Tor Wennesland, the UN Middle East envoy warned that “we are escalating towards a full-scale war.”
Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, urged Israel to show restraint, but said there was a “clear difference” between Israel defending itself and Hamas’s rocket attacks on civilians.
In Germany, Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for Angela Merkel, the Chancellor, said that her Government “condemns these incessant rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip against Israeli cities in the strongest terms”, adding that they “could not be justified”.
“Israel has the right to self-defence against these attacks,” he said.
WHEN I LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW I KNEW THAT IF I WENT OUTSIDE I WOULD BE KILLED.