GAZA CITY/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Heavy air strikes and rocket
fire in the Israel-Gaza conflict claimed more lives on both sides Tuesday as
tensions flared in Palestinian “day of anger” protests in occupied
Jerusalem and the West Bank.
اضافة اعلان
The
UN Security Council was to hold an emergency meeting
amid a diplomatic push to end the fighting, as Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu vowed Israel would continue its military onslaught on the coastal
enclave “as long as necessary”.
Israeli forces and protesters meanwhile clashed at multiple
flashpoints across the occupied West Bank and in East Jerusalem, hospitalizing
scores after Palestinians took to the streets in solidarity with their besieged
counterparts in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s intense bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip has
killed 213 Palestinians, including 61 children, and wounded more than 1,400
people in Gaza in more than a week of fighting against Hamas, according to the
health ministry in Gaza.
The death toll on the Israeli side rose to 12 when a volley
of rockets Hamas fired at the southern Eshkol region killed two Thai nationals
working in a factory and wounded several others, police said.
Israeli occupation strikes that again sent fireballs,
debris, and black smoke into the sky have leveled homes and multi-story towers,
cratered roads, and left two million Palestinians in Gaza desperate for
reprieve.
“They destroyed our house but I don’t know why they targeted
us,” said Nazmi Al-Dahdouh, 70, of Gaza City who remained shocked by what he
called “a terrifying, violent night”.
The humanitarian crisis deepened in the impoverished strip,
from where Hamas has launched nearly 3,500 rockets at Israel since May 10,
often forcing people living near Gaza into bomb shelters around the clock.
But a convoy of international aid trucks that started
rolling into the Strip through a border crossing from Israel, Kerem Shalom, was
halted when Israel quickly shuttered it again, citing a mortar attack on the
area.
The UN Security Council session, the fourth since the
conflict escalated, was called after the United States, a key Israel ally,
blocked adoption of a joint statement calling for a halt to the violence on
Monday for the third time in a week.
US President Joe Biden, having resisted joining other world
leaders and much of his own Democratic party in calling for an immediate end to
hostilities, told Netanyahu Monday night he backs a ceasefire, but stopped
short of demanding a truce.
France and Egypt are pushing for a ceasefire deal, while
Qatar and Egypt are working through another channel, via the UN.
The conflict risks precipitating a humanitarian disaster,
with the UN saying nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced and 2,500
have lost their homes.
Fighter jets have hit what the Israeli military dubs the
“metro”, its term for Hamas’s underground tunnels, which Israeli occupation
forces have previously acknowledged run in part through civilian areas.
A strike Monday knocked out Gaza’s only COVID-19 testing
laboratory, the health ministry said, and the Qatari Red Crescent said a strike
damaged one of its offices in the enclave.
The rate of positive coronavirus tests in the Gaza Strip has
been among the highest in the world, at 28 percent.
Hospitals in the territory, which has been under Israeli
blockade for almost 15 years, have been overwhelmed by patients and there are
frequent power blackouts.
Speaking at an air force base in Israel’s south, Netanyahu
said Hamas had “received blows they didn’t expect.”
“We’ve taken them many years back,” the premier said. “We’ll
continue as long as necessary to bring ... quiet back to the citizens of
Israel.”
Palestinians across the West Bank and in occupied East
Jerusalem mobilized Tuesday for protests and a general strike that shuttered
non-essential businesses, in support of those under bombardment in Gaza.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah movement had
called for a “day of anger,” a call echoed in Arab and ethnically mixed towns
inside Israel.
“We are here to raise our voice and stand with the people in
Gaza who are being bombed,” Ramallah protester Aya Dabour told AFP.
Israeli occupation forces said they came under fire north of
Ramallah. It said two personnel suffered leg injuries and were taken to
hospital.
In a separate incident, a 25-year-old Palestinian man was
shot dead by Israeli occupation forces in Al-Bireh, north of Ramallah, the
Palestinian health ministry said.
The ministry reported 70 people hospitalized due to clashes
with Israeli occupation forces throughout the West Bank, five of them in a
serious condition.
Earlier in the day, an assailant who attempted to attack
Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank city of Hebron was shot dead.
Tensions again flared in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah
neighborhood, where Palestinian protesters faced off against police, who used
stun grenades and “skunk water” cannon to disperse protesters.
The Israel-Gaza conflict was sparked after clashes broke out
at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound — one of Islam’s holiest sites — after
Israeli forces clashed with Palestinians on May 7.
This followed a crackdown against protests over planned
evictions of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
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