Rockets fired from Gaza amid Israeli raid, Tel Aviv attack
Escalation of back-and-forth violence feared
JERUSALEM — Hours after Israel’s leader said a large-scale military incursion aimed at rooting out Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank city of Jenin was wrapping up, rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel early Wednesday, raising fears of an escalation of tit-for-tat violence.
No injuries were immediately reported from the rocket attack, and the Israeli military said the country’s air-defense system had intercepted all five.
Earlier on Tuesday, eight people were wounded by a Palestinian man in a car-ramming and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv, the Israeli authorities said. A pregnant woman was injured and lost her baby, Israeli television reported.
In security camera footage broadcast on Israeli television, a car can be seen slamming into a curb in a residential area in the northern part of the city. The driver then leaves his car and chases and stabs at passersby, brandishing a heavy object. He was then shot and killed by a civilian, Israeli security officials said. Three people were in serious condition, the police said.
The Palestinian death toll in the Jenin operation, the biggest that Israel has launched in the area in many years, rose to 12, Palestinian health officials said Tuesday. Four were younger than 18, and at least five were claimed by Palestinian militant groups as fighters. At least 120 people were injured, including 20 seriously, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces also said on Twitter that a soldier had been killed “by gunfire” during the military operation Tuesday evening.
The military operation in Jenin and the attack in Tel Aviv added to the sense of uncertainty and tension in the region, after the most right-wing government in Israeli history took power six months ago. The coalition government’s leaders promised to expand Jewish settlements in occupied territory and to administer a tougher response to violence, while the Palestinian Authority has increasingly lost control of hotbeds of militancy in the occupied West Bank.
The military activities sent people fleeing, with as many as 3,000 of the camp’s roughly 17,000 residents seeking shelter in schools and other public buildings, or with families elsewhere. Alleyways were deserted in Jenin’s refugee camp, a usually crowded quarter abutting the West Bank city that was the focus of the military incursion.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Tuesday afternoon, during a visit to an army base near Jenin, that the operation was in its final stages. “At this moment we are completing the mission,” he said.
The UN Security Council will meet Friday to discuss the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories at the request of the United Arab Emirates, according to a UN post on Twitter.
Clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants intensified Tuesday evening after a relatively calmer period of scattered firefights. The Israeli military said its air force had struck Palestinian militants on the city’s outskirts, while Palestinian officials accused Israeli soldiers of firing tear gas into a hospital. The Israelis denied any attacks near hospitals.
Jenin, long a militant stronghold, has been at the center of escalating tensions and violence in the year leading up to the incursion early Monday. Amid the military operation there, the Israeli authorities said that a West Bank Palestinian had attacked Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, identified the attacker as Abd al-Wahab Khalaila, a 20-year-old Palestinian from Samua, a small town in the southern West Bank. Khalaila had no prior security record, the agency said.
“We’ve assessed that because of our activity in Judea and Samaria, the motivation and potential for attacks would rise,” the Israeli police chief, Yaakov Shabtai, told reporters, using the biblical name for the West Bank. Netanyahu vowed the attack would not deter Israel “in our struggle against terrorism.”
Hamas, the Palestinian militant faction that controls Gaza, claimed Khalaila as a member and praised the attack as a response to “the Zionist occupation’s aggression in Jenin.” But Palestinian groups have been known to claim as members or publicly honor all those killed by Israel, and Hamas stopped short of taking direct responsibility for the assault.