Israel accuses Iran of ordering Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza
JERUSALEM
Israel accused Iran on Saturday of ordering attacks by the Palestinian militant group that took responsibility for a heavy barrage of rocket fire from Gaza overnight.
Israel responded to the attacks on its southern territory, which were claimed by the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with retaliatory airstrikes against militant targets in Gaza. No fatalities were reported on either side.
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israel military spokesman, said the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’
Quds Force had communicated directly with Islamic Jihad, a mostly Iranian financed extremist group in Gaza, and had ordered and orchestrated the rocket fire.
“We do not take that lightly,” Conricus said, adding that Israel had passed messages through third parties warning that any Israeli response would not necessarily be “confined to geographic areas,” meaning that it could extend beyond Gaza.
While the focus was on Iran, Conricus also accused neighboring Syria of playing an unspecified role in the rocket fire, suggesting the orders might have come from Iranian forces deployed there.
A spokesman for Islamic Jihad, Daoud Shehab, denied that the group had acted on orders from Iran’s Quds Force or any other outside force. He said the group had retaliated for the killing of four Palestinians by Israeli forces Friday during a weekly protest along the Gaza border fence.
“What we did was a duty to defend the blood spilled by the army on the Gaza borders,” Shehab said.
Islamic Jihad generally works in coordination with Hamas, the larger Islamic militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. But Islamic Jihad sometimes asserts itself and competes with Hamas.
In an apparent attempt to pull back before dragging Gaza and Israel into a wider escalation, however, Islamic Jihad said Saturday that it was stopping rocket launches and that, with Egypt’s help, an understanding had been reached to restore calm.
Israeli and Palestinian analysts speculated over possible Iranian motives for ordering the launches of nearly 40 short-range rockets.
Several said it most likely had to do with an Iranian desire to disrupt broader efforts by Egypt and the United Nations to stabilize the cease-fire that ended the 2014 war between Gaza and Israel, and possibly to expand the terms of the truce.