A Week of Rockets, Riots and Rage // FAI ONLINE

Smoke and flame rises over the Gaza horizon after Israeli airstrikes targeting militant infrastructure in the Strip. (Youssef Massoud, Agence France-Presse, Getty Images)

After rioting in East Jerusalem boiled over into an air war between the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and Islamic militants in the Gaza Strip last weekend, the number of rockets, airstrikes and human casualties continued to climb on Friday, with no end in sight. Intercommunal violence between right-wing Jewish Israelis and Arab-Israelis in mixed cities also added to the tension, as mobs of Jordanian and Lebanese Arabs attempted to storm their respective borders with Israel during Friday’s “Day of Rage.”

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Gaza militias have fired over 2,500 rockets into Israeli territory since last Sunday, mostly targeting Israeli communities in the region of Southern Israel surrounding the Gaza Strip, known as the Gaza Envelope, including towns such as Sderot, Ashkelon, Alumim, and Ami'oz. However, Hamas has been showcasing the range of their rocket arsenal as well, targeting cities further afield, including Be’ersheva, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and the Lower Galilee region. Waves of rocket barrages have sent millions of Israelis racing to bomb shelters, sometimes dozens of times in a day, with air raid sirens providing communities in Southern Israel with less than a minute to take cover. Although Israel’s Iron Dome system has intercepted the vast majority of rockets approaching populated areas (at least 1,000 so far), eight Israeli civilians have still been killed and dozens have been wounded as a direct result of the rocket fire so far, including the deaths of two children and two Arab-Israelis, as well as an Indian national. Several other Israelis have died as a result of heart conditions or injuries sustained while fleeing to air raid shelters. IDF Staff Sgt. Omer Tabib, 21, was killed when his military Jeep was struck by an anti-tank missile near the Gaza Strip on Monday. United Airlines and Delta Airlines have cancelled all flights to Israel, as the Israeli cabinet has begun diverting commercial air traffic from Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv to Ramon Airport in the Negev Desert.

Meanwhile, in response, the Israeli Air Force has conducted over 600 airstrikes against Hamas and PIJ targets across the Gaza Strip in the last five days, degrading militant command and control, destroying dozens of rocket batteries, damaging a naval base, and killing over a dozen operational leaders. An IDF ruse which portrayed an imminent ground incursion into Gaza on Thursday night drew militants into underground tunnels around the northern Gazan community of Beit Lahiya, after which the IAF pounded the tunnels with over 450 missiles. Yet despite the IDF’s success in Operation Guardian of the Walls, Israeli intelligence estimates Hamas has tens of thousands of more munitions in its arsenal, suggesting that Gaza militants could continue at the present pace of daily rocket fire for at least two more months. Gazan health officials claim that at least 122 Gazans have died as a result of Israeli airstrikes, including over 30 children, despite the fact that the IDF warns residents in and around the targets of impending airstrikes to evacuate before they are struck. The IDF has reported almost 400 Hamas and PIJ rockets have fallen short of Israeli territory, landing inside the Gaza Strip, where they undoubtedly have caused casualties. Gaza is the third most densely populated area in the world, housing over two million Palestinians in an area only 365 kilometers square (140 miles).

CLICK THE IMAGE TO PROVIDE RELIEF FOR ISRAELI FAMILIES IN THE LINE OF FIRE

The last five days have also seen an alarming uptick in intercommunal violence between Israeli-Arabs (i.e. Arabs with Israeli citizenship) and right-wing Jewish groups, with mob violence resulting in the destruction of property and lynching of both Jews and Arabs in mixed cities such as Lod, Haifa, Tamar, and the Biblical town of Cana in the Northern Galilee. Jewish and Palestinian crowds clashed in East Jerusalem on Friday, including the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood, where a dispute over land rights was co-opted by Hamas last weekend as a pretext to initiate the latest round of Israeli-Gaza conflict.

“Day of Rage” marches were also held by Palestinians across the West Bank, resulting in clashes with Israeli troops in the flashpoint cities of Jenin and Ramallah. Palestinian heath officials in the West Bank claim at least 11 deaths as a result of the unrest. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the militant wing of the ruling Fatah Party, has called for attacks on IDF positions inside the West Bank. Also Friday, Palestinian sympathizers in Jordan and Lebanon, including descendants of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, attempted to storm their respective borders with Israel. They overwhelmed border checkpoints at the Israeli-Jordanian border and crossed the “Blue Line” fence near the northern Israeli city of Metula before they were driven back by Israeli tanks and infantry, resulting in the death of one Lebanese Arab man. Although the northern Galil and Golan regions have been mostly quiet for the past week, isolated incidents of rocket fire from Lebanon and Syria in the last two days have threated to open a new front in the escalating conflict.

We would ask the Maranatha family to continue to pray for the people of Israel, the people of Gaza, and members of the IDF, who are fighting for the protection of both Jew and Arab. We pray that the demonically -inspired rage against the people of the Eternal Covenant would come to nothing in the present conflict, and that the enemy would be restrained from provoking Jewish retaliation against Israeli Arabs. We would encourage Wire readers to consider supporting Israeli families in the line of rocket fire by giving to our campaign relief, as we host dozens of families in the Northern Galil and Golan during the conflict.

Maranatha.