The Middle East has been confronted in recent days with an outbreak of violence, which has caused yet more deaths in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this weekend. Domestically troubled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Monday (April 10) to “restore security” in his country. He also announced that he had reconsidered his decision announced at the end of March to dismiss his Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, who had publicly been moved by the division caused in the country by the justice reform project wanted by the government, and asked for a break in the process.
While violence between Israelis and Palestinians has been on an inexorable rise since the beginning of the year, following the inauguration of Netanyahu at the end of December at the head of one of the most right-wing governments in Israel’s history, the conflict has taken on a larger dimension in recent days.
Deadly attacks, rocket attacks from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, followed by Israeli reprisals: the region has been in the grip of a wave of violence since the brutal irruption, on April 5, in the middle of Ramadan, of the police in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.
“I promise you, we will reach out to all the vile terrorists who have killed our citizens and they will be held to account, without exception,” prime minister says after shock in Israel over deaths of three family members in an attack on Friday in the northern occupied West Bank.
Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem announced Monday afternoon the death of Lucy Dee, a 48-year-old British Israeli, injured in the attack that claimed the lives of two of her daughters, aged 16 and 20.
Earlier, a 15-year-old Palestinian teenager, Mohamed Fayez Balhan, was killed during an Israeli military incursion into the Palestinian refugee camp of Aqabat Jaber, near Jericho, which the army said was intended to “arrest a suspect”.
The day after the intervention of the Israeli police in the Al-Aqsa mosque (in the eastern, annexed part of Jerusalem), officially to “restore order” in the face of “extremists” barricaded with stones and fire rockets fireworks, about thirty rockets had been fired from Lebanon towards Israel, injuring one person and causing material damage.
The Israeli army, which accuses the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, of being the source of these shots, responded by carrying out strikes on Gaza and southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu made the martial remarks as he appears politically weakened, with several polls giving the opposition the winner in the event of an election today.
On Friday evening, the Prime Minister announced the mobilization of reserve police units and military reinforcements, after a ram attack in Tel Aviv that claimed the life of an Italian tourist, and the death of the two Israeli sisters. British.
On Monday, several thousand Israeli settlers took part in a march towards Eviatar, a Jewish settlement not recognized by the Israeli authorities in the northern West Bank, to demand its legalization, AFP journalists noted.
Nearly three million Palestinians live in the West Bank. About 490,000 Jewish settlers also live there in settlements that the UN considers illegal under international law.
Several ministers and MPs took part in the march to Eviatar, including far-right Public Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who said there that “the answer to terrorism is to build” more settlements.
Since the start of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of at least 94 Palestinians, 19 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian, according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
These figures include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, including minors, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, including minors, and three members of the Arab minority.
