Fragile truce in Gaza as Israel criticised for civilian deaths

GAZA - Israel launched fresh strikes against Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza early Friday in response to rocket fire, underscoring the fragility of a ceasefire that ended a two-day escalation triggered by Israel’s targeted killing of an Islamic Jihad commander.

The fighting killed 34 Palestinians, including 16 civilians. Among those civilians were two 7-year-old boys and two toddlers. Palestinian militants fired more than 450 rockets toward Israel, paralyzing much of southern Israel without causing any deaths or serious injuries.

Islamic Jihad announced the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire on Thursday, claiming it had extracted several concessions from Israel. Israel does not generally comment on informal understandings with militant groups and said only that it would halt fire as long as the militants did the same.

The truce angered many Islamic Jihad supporters, who held protests across Gaza. The barrage of rockets fired into Israel late Thursday, which Israel said were intercepted by its missile defences, may have been an expression of discontent with the militant group’s leadership.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said it carried out new strikes overnight against Islamic Jihad, which is an Iran-backed militant group that is the second most powerful in the Gaza Strip after ruling Hamas. The IDF said it retaliated after at least seven rockets were fired at Israel late Thursday.

The IDF said it "views the violation of the ceasefire and rockets directed at Israel with great severity." It said it was prepared to "continue operating as necessary against all attempts to harm Israel civilians".

Two wounded Palestinians were being treated in hospital in the southern part of the territory, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

The ceasefire brokered by Egyptian and UN officials, the usual mediators between Gaza and Israel, was agreed as the flare-up raised fears of a new all-out conflict.

During the day on Thursday, normal life had resumed quietly in Israeli regions near the Gaza border, while in the blockaded enclave Palestinian residents had also embraced the return of relative calm.

"We hope for peace, we don't want war," said Mahmoud Jarda, an inhabitant of Gaza.

To keep a lid on tensions, Hamas cancelled weekly protests along the Gaza-Israeli border that have often led to violence since March 2018. At least 311 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza or the border area since then, most of them during demonstrations along the Israeli-built fence that separates the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Bomb shelters

The escalation began early Tuesday with Israel's targeted killing of a top Islamic Jihad commander, Baha Abu al-Ataa, whom it described as a "ticking time bomb" and accused of being behind rocket fire and other attacks.

The violence came at a politically sensitive time for Israel, with no new government in place since a September election ended in deadlock.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Abu al-Ataa "was killed alongside dozens of terrorists" after the strike on his home. That strike triggered almost immediate retaliatory rocket fire from Islamic Jihad at Israel, setting off air-raid sirens and sending Israelis rushing to bomb shelters in the country's southern and central regions.

Israel's military said around 450 rockets had been fired at its territory since Tuesday morning and air defences had intercepted dozens of them, creating visible fireballs high in the sky. No Israelis were killed, though one rocket narrowly missed speeding cars on a busy highway. Israeli medics said they had treated 63 people as of Wednesday night for mild injuries and "stress".

Israel responded with air strikes, saying it targeted more Islamic Jihad militant sites and rocket- and missile-launching squads. Islamic Jihad has said several more of its members were among those killed in the fighting this week.

Palestinian officials said eight members of the same family, including five children, were killed in an Israeli strike in the central Gaza Strip.

Israel's military said the man targeted and killed in that strike was an Islamic Jihad rocket unit commander.

"He, like many others, had the tactic of hiding ammunition and military infrastructure in their own residence," said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman. "Of course we try always to minimise the amount of non-combatants killed or injured."

The military said Friday that it struck “Islamic Jihad military infrastructure” in the central Gazan town of Deir al-Balah and had not intended to harm civilians.

“According to the information available to the IDF at the time of the strike, no civilians were expected to be harmed as a result of the strike,” the military said in a statement. It said an investigation is underway.

But relatives, neighbours and an Islamic Jihad spokesman disputed that the man allegedly targeted by Israel belonged to its military wing.

"This is a war crime," said neighbour Adan Abu Abdallah. "You are killing innocent children, sleeping at home."

Abdelhaj Musleh, another neighbor, said many children lived in the house in Deir el-Balah. "If there had been a warning, no one would have waited for this death and destruction," he said.

The neighbors said an Islamic Jihad commander lived in the home that was destroyed, but the commander wasn’t home at the time of the strike and had apparently gone into hiding elsewhere. Instead, his brother, Rasmi Abu Malhous was killed, along with both of their wives and five children under the age of 13. They including his 7-year-old son and two nephews, ages 2 and 3.

The neighbors, speaking on condition of anonymity because they did not want to anger the family, said Rasmi Abu Malhous, 45, was not involved in any militant activity like his brother. Some said he had previously worked as a Palestinian Authority military police officer.

The home was virtually disintegrated by the blast, leaving a large crater with kitchenware, pillows and mattresses strewn about. Neighbors dug out eight bodies and tried to salvage some school backpacks and clothes.

“When we came, we did not recognize where the house was standing,” said Musleh. “The airstrike intentionally targeted civilians.”

'Hiding ammunition'

Since Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007, Israel has fought three wars and dozens of skirmishes against Palestinian resistance groups. While the wars have inflicted heavy damage on Hamas and Islamic Jihad, hundreds of civilians have also died in Israeli airstrikes.

The high civilian death toll has drawn heavy international criticism, and the International Criminal Court in The Hague has opened a preliminary investigation into Israel’s battlefield tactics.

Israel rejects the criticism, saying it takes numerous precautions to prevent unnecessary civilian casualties. Following the latest round of violence, military officials repeated their claim that Israel seeks to avoid civilian casualties.

“Our operations against the Islamic Jihad were very accurate, very deliberate, based on the highest level of intelligence that we have,” Conricus told reporters Thursday after the cease-fire was declared.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting a group of Israeli soldiers to congratulate them on what he called a successful mission, appeared to gloat over Israel's strikes on targets' homes in Gaza.

“Our enemies got the message,” he said. “We can reach anyone, even in their beds.”

“Too often civilians pay the price for political brinkmanship by states and armed groups,” said Omar Shakir, the country director of Human Rights Watch. “We’ve seen several rounds of fighting now in Gaza where civilians have lost their lives or had their property damaged and faced harrowing circumstances as the result of unlawful attacks by both parties.”

Shakir acknowledged that such airstrikes can be permissible under international law, depending on the threat posed by the target and whether the damage to civilians is “proportional” to the military gain. But the efficacy of Israel's strategy of targeted assassinations on militant groups' commanders has been disputed, showing few signs of lessening the capabilities of Hamas or Islamic Jihad or deterring their rocket attacks.

Israel argues that civilian casualties are inevitable in Gaza’s densely populated urban environment. It says militants often fire rockets from crowded residential areas, drawing Israeli retaliatory strikes, and Israel has often accused Palestinian militants of using civilians, including their own families, as human shields.

Palestinian militants also have come under international criticism for firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilian areas. The Israeli military said dozens of the rockets this week were misfired and landed inside Gaza, with one believed to have damaged the offices of the International Commission for Human Rights, a Palestinian watchdog group. The group stopped short of criticizing Islamic Jihad but called for an investigation of the incident.

Unusually, Israel has singled out Islamic Jihad rather than hold Hamas - the Islamist movement that rules Gaza - responsible for the latest round of violence.

Israeli analysts said it was a clear signal the army sought to avoid a wider conflict in Gaza, where Israel and Palestinian militants have fought three wars since 2008.

Hamas, for its part, has repeatedly said it would not abandon its Palestinian ally - but its decision not to join the fight has helped maintain a fragile truce with Israel that has seen tens of millions of dollars in Qatari aid flow into the impoverished Gaza Strip since last year.