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Bloomberg
A brittle calm took hold in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel on Sunday after the Palestinian enclave’s Hamas rulers and another powerful militant faction reported that efforts had succeeded to end a weekend of escalating violence.
Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesman, said in an emailed statement that regional and international mediators crafted an agreement that led to a truce. He didn’t identify the mediators, but local media, quoting unidentified Hamas officials, said senior Egyptian intelligence officers and United Nations special envoy Nicolai Mladenov brokered the accord. The fighters group also reported agreeing to a truce.
The Israeli military last reported fire from Gaza around 1:30 am, and said special orders put in place in southern Israel over the weekend, including a prohibition on large gatherings, had been lifted.
Israel on July 14 launched its harshest assault against the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers since their 2014 war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, in waves of airstrikes that drew barrages of Palestinian mortar and rocket fire. Two Palestinian teenagers were killed and three Israelis were wounded.
Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Jonathan Conricus said the purpose of July 14’s operation was to stop arson
attacks, attempted border breaches, and assaults on soldiers from Gaza that have grown increasingly violent. Netanyahu had vowed to intensify the assaults if necessary.
Volatility along the border has intensified since Gazans launched near-weekly protests against Israel in late March. Almost 140 Palestinians, some of them unarmed, have been killed in the confrontations.
While protest organisers have said the demonstrations that began in late March are meant to be peaceful, Israel says Gaza militants use them as cover to attack.
Militants have tried repeatedly to break through the border fence, attacked soldiers, and destroyed thousands of acres of farmland and nature reserves in southern Israel with kites and balloons outfitted with firebombs and explosives.
The confrontations have coincided with Hamas’s increasingly desperate situation. The tiny territory has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade since Hamas, considered a terrorist group by much of the West, wrested power in 2007. It hasn’t recovered from three devastating wars with Israel, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has deepened the hardship with economic sanctions on Gaza intended to batter Hamas.
Underground Tunnels
In its operation on July 14, Israeli aircraft pounded dozens of Hamas targets, hitting two underground tunnels militants dug to infiltrate Israel to carry out attacks, and other compounds including a training facility and a site used to prepare kites and balloons for airborne arson attacks, the military said.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said the teenagers, aged 15 and 16, were killed by shrapnel from an Israeli attack on the training facility.
Projectiles fell next to a synagogue and in the yard of a home in the Israeli town of Sderot, the Ynet news website reported.
One person sustained moderate injuries and two were hurt lightly, Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said.
According to the military, Palestinians fired more than 190 mortar shells and rockets at southern Israel on July 14. More than three dozen launches were intercepted by missile defenses.
“We will intensify our attacks as needed,†Netanyahu vowed in a video message.