Violence between Israel and Islamic Jihad continues longer than their previous clashes

While violence between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants in Gaza had already reached a fifth day on Saturday, Egypt-led ceasefire efforts failed to halt the fighting, making this round of clashes one of the longest in recent times. years.

The fighting has been contained because the militant group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, has failed to win over Hamas — the more powerful Islamist militant organization that controls Gaza — or any other major faction. Alone on the battlefield, the fighters of Islamic Jihad have been dealt a crushing blow.

Some experts attribute the endurance of Islamic Jihad — which is labeled a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and many other Western countries — to the fact that, unlike Hamas, it bears no responsibility for the largely Gaza’s impoverished population of over two million. people. Instead, it is focused only on its long-term goal of replacing Israel with an Islamic state.

“It only exists for one purpose: to fight and ‘liberate’ the country,” Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian national security expert in East Jerusalem, said of Islamic Jihad.

“They have no ministerial positions or parliamentary seats to hold and no privileges other than to die,” he said, adding that the group was gaining the respect of many Palestinians, who sympathize with Gaza residents who live under a strict land, air and naval blockade life. by Israel and Egypt.

Israel also claims that Iran, the patron of Islamic Jihad, set the agenda while the group’s leaders live in exile. Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesperson for the Israeli army, said last week that the group’s leaders, “who live in hotels in Beirut and Damascus and drive Mercedes” while on the Iranian payroll, “were OK with the bleeding of Gaza”.

Previous battles between Israel and Islamic Jihad — in April, August last year and November 2019 — were over in about 50 hours or less.

But in a televised interview in October, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in exile, said the group had made a “strategic mistake” two months earlier in agreeing to a ceasefire after 50 hours, under local and regional conditions. Busy. He said they could have kept fighting and achieved “concrete results on the ground”.

This time, Israel has argued that it is ready for an unconditional ceasefire, but has also said it is ready to continue its offensive. Islamic Jihad, for its part, cited “great loyal support from the people” on Saturday and said “the resistance has prepared for months of confrontation.”

Two major events scheduled for the coming week have the potential to garner wider Arab support for the group’s cause.

On Monday, Palestinians and their supporters will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, or “catastrophe” in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees fled or were driven from their homes in the war surrounding Israel’s founding in 1948 and hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed in what is now Israel . Later this week, tens of thousands of Israeli nationalists are expected to march with flags through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City in an annual parade commemorating Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 war.

After firing rockets at Jerusalem on Friday, Dawoud Shehab, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, told a local Arab news outlet: “The battle is approaching the time of the flag march — that’s what urges us to keep going.”

The warring parties exchanged fire again during the night and on Saturday. The Israeli military said it hit mortar shells and rocket launch sites belonging to Islamic Jihad, as well as what it described as two of the group’s command centers. And in southern Israel, sirens sounded continuously, warning of a barrage of incoming projectiles.

In the past five days, Islamic Jihad has fired more than 1,000 rockets and mortar shells at Israel, and Israel has hit more than 250 group-affiliated targets in Gaza, according to data released by the military. Israeli authorities also said the group had fired dozens of mortar rounds into areas near the Israel-Gaza border crossings, preventing them from being opened for the passage of people and goods.

The Palestinian Health Ministry has reported that at least 33 people have been killed in Gaza since the campaign began, many of them civilians, and more than 100 injured. In Israel, an elderly woman was killed on Thursday by a rocket fired from Gaza that hit an apartment building in central Israel. Israel’s ambulance service has reported eight injuries from shrapnel and debris, including three who it said were injured on Saturday, two of them seriously. According to the Israeli news media, two of the three Palestinian workers were from Gaza.

Israeli officials said the decision to launch the offensive against Islamic Jihad leaders was made on May 2, the day the group fired more than 100 rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel after the death in Israeli custody of a Palestinian hunger striker, Khader Adnan, who protested against his detention. Mr. Adnan was an Islamic Jihad leader from the occupied West Bank. That night, Israel carried out some initial airstrikes in Gaza that killed one man.

Israeli officials said the campaign, which began Tuesday, was aimed at weakening Islamic Jihad, a goal they achieved in the first seconds of the campaign, and restoring stability to the area. The opening strikes killed three of the top Islamic Jihad commanders and 10 civilians, including children, according to Palestinian health officials. Subsequent attacks this week left three more of the group’s top commanders dead.

The United States has supported Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket fire by Islamic Jihad, while also stressing the urgency of reaching a ceasefire agreement.

Islamic Jihad has set several conditions for a ceasefire, including an Israeli commitment to a halt to killings; the release of Mr. Adnan’s body for burial; and the cancellation of the Jerusalem flag parade – terms Israel has refused.

Egypt presented a new proposal for an unconditional ceasefire on Friday night, a diplomat familiar with the talks said. But on Saturday, the guns still spoke.

Iyad Abuheweila contributing reporting from Gaza City, and Carol Sutherland from Moshav Ben Ami, Israel.