Israel Steps Up Offensive To Eliminate Islamic Jihad Leaders In Gaza

The "preemptive strike" launched by Israel on Friday against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad bordered on open warfare this Sunday.

Israeli aircraft and artillery bombardments have already caused three dozen deaths.

The objective of liquidating the main leaders of the Al Quds Brigades (military arm of the Jihad) has been fulfilled, but numerous civilians have also lost their lives, including six children.

Hostilities are far from abating.

While the Armed Forces intensify the operation baptized as Awakening of the Dawn, the Islamist militia redoubles the launch of rockets, with more than 580 projectiles fired since the beginning of the escalation, for the moment without causing casualties.

Anti-missile alarm sirens have been activated in recent hours even around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The offensive continues for the third consecutive day, while the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza hide in their homes and tens of thousands of Israelis from towns around the Strip remain most of the time in bomb shelters.

This is the largest outbreak of war since the general conflict in May last year, which was the fourth war suffered in the enclave in the last 15 years after the Islamist movement Hamas came to power.

At the center of the target of the selective assassinations with missiles was the commander Taysir al Jabari, better known as Abu Mahmud, head of the northern zone of the Strip, killed in the first Israeli attack on Friday.

Commander Khalid Mansur, in command of the southern zone, was liquidated along with two other jihadists on Saturday night in a coordinated attack with the Shin Bet (internal intelligence).

A military command has declared to the Hebrew press that the second largest militia in Gaza (after Ezedin al Qassam, the armed wing of Hamas) has been practically decapitated.

In parallel, the Israeli Army has continued to launch successive raids in recent hours to capture dozens of members of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank.

Both the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government have limited themselves to condemning the attacks against the Islamist military leaders in the coastal enclave, without opposing political or military pressure to the Army's offensive.

About 140 Islamic Jihad targets have already been destroyed in the current campaign, including a tunnel under the border to carry out attacks on Israeli territory, rocket launch ramps and factories and weapons depots, according to information released by military spokesmen. .

Israel has recorded the launch of 585 rockets and projectiles from the Strip, of which 115 did not cross the limits of the Palestinian territory.

The Iron Dome defense system has intercepted 185 rockets.

For the Army, this data is equivalent to a success rate of 97%, since the anti-missile shield batteries are only activated when their radars detect a defined trajectory towards a populated area.

Residents of Mevasert Sion and Abu Gosh, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, reported strong explosions caused by the impact of Iron Dome interceptors against Jihad projectiles on Sunday morning.

On Saturday afternoon, alerts multiplied in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.

The balance of victims published by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza raises the death toll to 31, and the number of wounded to 265, in the Israeli bombardments since the beginning of the offensive.

Eight of the fatalities fell in Rafah (south), in the attack against Commander Mansur of the al-Quds Brigades.

Another six people lost their lives, including four children, in Jabalya (north) in an explosion caused by an Israeli missile, according to Palestinian sources, and by a failed Islamic Jihad rocket, according to the Army, which has rushed to spread a video (not independently verified) in which it shows the supposed erroneous drift of the projectile.

A group closely linked to Iran

Islamic Jihad, which only has a thousand militiamen and an arsenal of some 5,000 rockets, is weakened after the Israeli operations unleashed against its leaders in 2019 and 2021. It is closely linked to Iran, while Hamas maintains a strategic alliance with Qatar, its main regional support.

Both groups are classified as terrorists by the US and the EU.

Egypt and the United Nations maintain a mediation path open to try to silence the weapons in Gaza while Hamas, an ally of Jihad, still remains on the sidelines of the hostilities.

Both sides deny that they are willing to stop the fight.

An Israeli military spokesman quoted by Reuters announced this Sunday that the Armed Forces will respond calmly if the enemy stops firing rockets.

Negotiations between Israel and the Gaza militias usually establish the imposition of a period of several hours without attacks before accepting a permanent ceasefire.

According to an Egyptian diplomat quoted by the daily

the negotiations try to agree on a humanitarian truce.

The same source has warned that if an agreement for the cessation of hostilities is not closed in the next 48 hours, Hamas may join the conflict.

The tension caused by the explosions from the shooting of rockets around Jerusalem has coincided this Sunday with the visit of hundreds of ultra-nationalist and religious Israelis to the Esplanade of the Mosques, in the Islamic heart of the Holy City, during the holiday that commemorates the destruction of the Jewish temples that were erected, according to the Hebrew tradition, in that same place.

A strong police deployment has tried to prevent Jewish visitors from praying in the compound that houses the Al Aqsa mosque, the third holiest place in Islam, against the regulations established by the authorities, fearing a new outbreak of Palestinian violence in the Old City.

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