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Fire and smoke rise above buildings in Gaza City as Israel launched air strikes on the Palestinian enclave early on February 2, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AFP
Israeli aircraft carried out several raids at a militant site in the Gaza Strip early on Thursday, the Israeli military said, hours after Palestinian militants fired a rocket into Israel’s south, raising already heightened tensions for the country’s new ultranationalist government.
The Israeli military said the airstrikes targeted a rocket production workshop for the militant Hamas group, which controls Gaza. It said the site contained raw chemical materials.
There were no reports of casualties.
Late Wednesday, Israeli air defenses intercepted a rocket from Gaza, the army said. Last week, Gaza militants and Israel broke months of cross-border calm by exchanging rockets and airstrikes after Israel killed 10 Palestinians in a military operation in the West Bank.
In Israel, local residents reported hearing explosions. Israel’s rescue service said it received no reports of injuries except for a 50-year-old woman who slipped and fell while running to a shelter.
The action came after Hamas threatened Israel over the combative stance of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has promised harsh treatment of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. From the occupied West Bank to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, many Palestinians revere prisoners as heroes for the Palestinian cause.
Ben-Gvir said the new rocket fire from Gaza won’t stop him from implementing his punitive policies against Palestinian detainees. He called for an urgent Security Cabinet meeting to discuss a response.
Israeli-Palestinian violence has spiked in recent days as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited with a call for calm.
Most of the 10 killed during the Israeli raid on a militant stronghold in the West Bank city of Jenin last week were militants. The next day, a Palestinian shooting attack in an east Jerusalem Jewish settlement killed seven people. A separate east Jerusalem shooting over the weekend by a 13-year-old Palestinian wounded two Israelis.
Following the unrest, Israel approved a series of punitive steps against the Palestinians.
Hamas issued a statement Tuesday condemning alleged assaults by prison guards against Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, specifically female detainees.
The Israeli Prison Service said the problems started last Friday when it placed dozens of Palestinian prisoners in solitary confinement after they celebrated the deadly Palestinian attack outside the synagogue in east Jerusalem. A female Palestinian detainee who was punished with isolation tried to set fire to her cell in protest, the prison service said. In an unrelated move, the prison service removed televisions from three cells in Israel’s Ofer Prison near the city of Ramallah.
Amani Srahneh from the Palestinian Prisoners Club, a group representing former and current prisoners, said the “escalatory measures and this new Israeli government’s policy of inciting against prisoners” was creating “a very tense situation.”
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