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The Israeli strikes have killed at least 26 people in the last three days, including six children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and injured at least 74. U.N. officials have expressed growing alarm over the civilian death toll.
Israeli aircraft struck the upper floor of an apartment building in the south of the enclave early Thursday, killing three PIJ members, including Ali Hassan Ghali, who the group identified as the head of its rocket program. The other two were his brother and nephew, according to Palestinian media.
Later in the day, the PIJ confirmed another strike had killed Ahmed Abu Daqqa, identified by Israel Defense Forces as the rocket program’s second-in-command. Four others were wounded in the attack, health officials said.
Israel has avoided direct hits on Hamas, the dominant and more heavily armed faction that rules Gaza. While the group has repeatedly condemned Israel’s attacks and pledged revenge, military officials said they saw no sign yet that Hamas had deployed its own weapons in the latest escalation.
The two militant groups, while common enemies of Israel, are rivals who compete for popular support in Gaza and across the West Bank. Hamas has publicly pledged support for PIJ in the escalation, but has also refused to participate in the strikes against Israel. Instead, it has remained on the sidelines while the confrontation decimates PIJ leadership and depletes its arsenal.
“Hamas has a lot to lose by engaging with Israel,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, chairman of the political science department at al-Azhar University in Gaza City.
If Hamas were to become involved in the fighting, he said, it would probably mean the revocation of Israeli work permits that thousands of Palestinians in the enclave depend on to make a living.
“For now,” added Abusada, “neither Hamas nor Israel want that big confrontation.”
Islamic Jihad has fired more than 547 rockets since Wednesday, according to the IDF, with some projectiles reaching as far as Tel Aviv. After an overnight pause in launches, air raid sirens sounded early Thursday in towns close to the Gaza border and continued regularly through the day.
At least five people were injured after a rocket hit a home in the central Israeli town of Rehovot, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency rescue services. Local officials said several houses and vehicles were hit in Sderot, Netivot and other communities near Gaza. One rocket fell on the roof of a kindergarten in the Eshkol region; another hit an empty playground. Schools in the area remained closed for a third day.
Only 394 of the rockets launched made it into Israeli territory, the IDF said, with most of those intercepted by the country’s air defense system, known as Iron Dome. More than 120 failed upon launch and landed inside of Gaza, it said.
Diplomatic efforts to curtail the fighting continued overnight as governments expressed concern about the loss of life and the risk of the conflict widening. Egyptian media reported that an agreement between the parties had been reached late Wednesday, but no official announcement came and the attacks continued.
An Islamic Jihad spokesman confirmed to The Washington Post that the group had demanded an end to targeted killings at peace talks in Cairo. But he denied that the loss of its commanders has deterred the group from retaliating, saying their deaths only “enhanced the steadfast challenge to continue on the path of Jihad and resistance.”
“The assassination of the leaders won’t change anything in the equation,” the spokesman, Tariq Silmi, said in an interview.
In targeting key PIJ figures, Israel has deployed a lethal blend of precision projectiles, surveillance drones and detailed human intelligence. According to media reports, Ghali was killed while hiding in his bedroom.
“We see you wherever you are and you can’t hide,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address Wednesday night. “We will choose where and when to attack you.”
Michael Milstein, a former senior adviser to COGAT, the Israeli defense agency that handles the West Bank and Gaza, said that the current campaign against PIJ will “cause a vacuum in the military leadership and general command,” but that, because of the group’s relatively small size, “there are always new alternatives.”
“We mustn’t say this is the end of the PIJ,” he cautioned.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan, in a call to his Israeli counterpart Wednesday, encouraged the regional cease-fire efforts and cited the Biden’s administration’s “ironclad support for Israel’s security, as well as its right to defend its people from indiscriminate rocket attacks.”
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said Wednesday that the deaths of civilians, particularly women and children, was “unacceptable and must stop immediately.”
“Israel must abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law, including the proportional use of force and taking all feasible precautions to spare civilians,” a statement from his office said. “The Secretary-General also condemns the indiscriminate launching of rockets from Gaza into Israel, which violates international humanitarian law and puts at risk both Palestinian and Israeli civilians.”
The military escalation began with an operation early Tuesday in which 40 Israeli aircraft hit three apartment buildings across the enclave, killing three senior leaders of the Islamic Jihad and at least 12 other people. Israel said the militants had been directly involved in attacks against Israelis and were planning more “within days.” One of the men killed had directed a barrage of more than 100 rockets into Israel earlier this month, following the death of a jailed Palestinian hunger striker from Islamic Jihad.
Rubin reported from Tel Aviv, Balousha from Gaza City.
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