Israel strikes Gaza after fires sparked
JERUSALEM — Israeli aircraft carried out a series of airstrikes at militant sites in the Gaza Strip early today, the first such raids since a shaky ceasefire ended an 11-day conflict with Hamas last month.
The strikes took place after hundreds of Israeli ultranationalists, some chanting “Death to Arabs,” paraded Tuesday in east Jerusalem in a show of force that threatened to spark renewed violence. Palestinians in Gaza responded by launching incendiary balloons that caused at least 10 fires in southern Israel.
The airstrikes targeted facilities used by Hamas militants for meetings to plan attacks, the Israeli military said, blaming the group for any act of violence emanating from Gaza. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Palestinians consider Tuesday’s march, meant to celebrate Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem in 1967, to be a provocation. Hamas called on Palestinians to “resist” the parade, a version of which helped ignite the conflict in May.
With music blaring, hundreds of Jewish nationalists gathered and moved in front of the Damascus Gate. Most appeared to be young men, and many held Israeli flags as they danced and sang religious songs.
At one point, several dozen young people, jumping and waving their hands in their air, chanted: “Death to Arabs.” In another anti-Arab chant, they yelled: “May your village burn.”
In a condemnation on Twitter, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said those shouting racist slogans were “a disgrace to the Israeli people,” adding: “The fact that there are radicals for whom the Israeli flag represents hatred and racism is abominable and unforgivable.”
The crowd, while boisterous, appeared to be much smaller than during last month’s parade. From the Damascus Gate, marchers proceeded around the Old City to the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray.
Ahead of the march, Israeli police cleared the area in front of the Damascus Gate, shut down roads to traffic, ordered shops to close and sent away young Palestinian protesters. Police said officers arrested 17 people suspected of involvement in violence, some of whom threw rocks and attacked police, and that two officers needed medical treatment. Palestinians said five people were hurt in clashes with police.
The parade provided an early challenge for Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, a hardline Israeli nationalist who has promised a pragmatic approach as he presides over a delicate, diverse coalition government.
Though there were concerns the march would raise tensions, canceling it would have opened Bennett and other right-wing members of the coalition to criticism from those who would view it as a capitulation to Hamas. The coalition was sworn in Sunday and includes parties from across the political spectrum, including a small Arab party.
Mansour Abbas, whose Raam party is the first Arab faction to join an Israeli coalition, said the march was “an attempt to set the region on fire for political aims,” with the intention of undermining the new government.
Abbas said the police and public security minister should have canceled the event. “I call on all sides not to be dragged into an escalation and maintain maximum restraint,” he said.
In past years, the march passed through the Damascus Gate and into the heart of a crowded Palestinian neighborhood with narrow streets and alleys. But police changed the route Tuesday.
Instead, the route went around the ancient walls of the Old City and through the Jaffa Gate, a main thoroughfare for tourists, and toward the Jewish Quarter and Western Wall.
Hamas had called on Palestinians to show “valiant resistance” to the march. It urged people to gather in the Old City and at the Al-Aqsa Mosque to “rise up in the face of the occupier and resist it by all means to stop its crimes and arrogance.”
In the afternoon, Hamaslinked Palestinians launched some incendiary balloons from Gaza, setting off at least 10 blazes in southern Israel, according to Israel’s national Fire Department.
Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh of the internationally backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank called the march an “aggression against our people.”
After capturing east Jerusalem in 1967, Israel annexed the area in a move not recognized by most of the international community. It considers the entire city its capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state.