Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday vowed to restore security “on all fronts” after surging violence that included rocket fire from Lebanon and Syria, and two more deaths.
Netanyahu also reinstated the defense minister whose firing he announced last month.
Heavy clashes, shootings, rocket strikes and a car-ramming attack have marred a period when the Muslim holy month of Ramadan coincides with the Jewish Passover and Christian Easter.
Photo: Bloomberg
The latest casualties were a Palestinian teenager and a British-Israeli mother who succumbed to injuries from a West Bank shooting that earlier killed her two daughters.
The day after Israeli police on Wednesday last week stormed the prayer hall of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, more than 30 rockets were fired from Lebanese soil into Israel.
The Israeli army said the attack was most likely carried out by Hamas.
Photo: Bloomberg
Israel then bombarded the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, targeting “terror infrastructures” it said belonged to Hamas.
“We will not allow the terrorist Hamas to establish itself in Lebanon,” by acting on “all fronts,” Netanyahu told a news conference.
The latest surge in violence began late last month after Netanyahu announced a “pause” for dialogue on judicial reform legislation, which caused divisions in his government.
Photo: Reuters
Among the political casualties was Yoav Gallant, whom the prime minister dismissed on March 26 after he called for a halt to the legislative process, citing national security concerns and threats by reserve military personnel not to report for duty.
Netanyahu said that he and Gallant had “difficult disputes,” but he had decided to put them in the past.
“Gallant remains in his post and we will continue to work together for the safety of the citizens of Israel,” he said.
In Tel Aviv, several hundred protesters took to the streets to denounce the government and condemn the prime minister’s speech, according to images broadcast by Israeli television.
In the latest shooting in the territory, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian, Mohammed Fayez Balhan, 15, and wounded two other people, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said, during what the army described as a raid to arrest a “terror suspect.”
The Israeli army said that its forces were operating in the Aqabat Jaber camp, the site of previous Israeli raids this year, near Jericho, where soldiers were seeking “to apprehend a terror suspect.”
The army said that troops responded with live fire after “suspects opened fire toward [soldiers], hurled explosive devices and Molotov cocktails.”
A suspect was taken in by security forces, it said.
The operation came as a Jerusalem hospital confirmed that a British-Israeli woman, Lucy (Leah) Dee, had died after being seriously injured in a shooting on Friday in the West Bank that killed her two daughters, aged 16 and 20.
Their car came under fire in the Jordan Valley, where Jericho is.
The families were residents of Efrat, a West Bank settlement.
British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affair James Cleverly wrote on Twitter that there could be “no justification” for the “senseless violence.”
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