Israeli army soldiers guard a section of Israel's separation barrier, in the West Bank village of Nilin, west of Ramallah, on Nov. 7, 2021.Nasser Nasser/The Associated Press
Palestinian militants fired a rocket into southern Israel for the first time in months on Monday, in a potentially major escalation after clashes at a sensitive holy site in Jerusalem and a wave of attacks and military raids elsewhere.
Israel said it intercepted the rocket, and there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. Israel holds Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers responsible for all such projectiles and usually launches air strikes in their wake. It was the first such rocket fire since New Year’s Eve.
Hours earlier, the leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group, which boasts an arsenal of rockets, had issued a brief, cryptic warning, condemning Israeli “violations” in Jerusalem.
Ziad al-Nakhala, who is based outside the Palestinian territories, said threats to tighten an Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza imposed after Hamas took power in 2007 “can’t silence us from what’s happening in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.”
Palestinians and Israeli police clashed over the weekend in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, which has long been an epicentre of Israeli-Palestinian violence. It is the third-holiest site in Islam and the holiest for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because the mosque stands on a hilltop where the Jewish temples were located in antiquity.
Protests and clashes there last year eventually led to an 11-day Gaza war.
Police said they were responding to Palestinian stone-throwing and that they were committed to ensuring that Jews, Christians and Muslims – whose major holidays are converging this year – could celebrate them safely. Palestinians view the presence of police at the site as a provocation.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Monday, ahead of the rocket fire, that Israel has been the target of a “Hamas-led incitement campaign.”
The latest tensions come during the confluence of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the week-long Jewish holiday of Passover. Christians are also celebrating their Holy Week leading up to Easter, and tens of thousands of visitors have flocked to Jerusalem’s Old City – home to major holy sites for all three faiths – for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Jordan and Egypt, which made peace with Israel decades ago and co-ordinate with it on security matters, have condemned its actions at the mosque. Jordan – which serves as custodian of the site – summoned Israel’s charge d’affaires on Monday in protest.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II discussed the violence with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, agreeing on “the need to stop all illegal and provocative Israeli measures” there, according to a statement. Jordan planned to convene a meeting of other Arab states on the issue.
Israel has been working to improve relations with Jordan over the past year and has recently normalized relations with other Arab states over their shared concerns about Iran. But the Jerusalem clashes, and a recent wave of violence, have brought renewed attention to the conflict with the Palestinians, which Israel has sought to sideline in recent years.
An Arab party that made history last year by joining Israel’s governing coalition suspended its participation on Sunday – a largely symbolic act that nevertheless reflected the sensitivity of the holy site, which is at the emotional heart of the century-old conflict.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem – which includes the Old City – in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state.
The Palestinians have long feared that Israel plans to take over or partition the mosque compound, and in recent weeks calls by Jewish extremists to sacrifice animals there have circulated widely among Palestinians on social media, sparking calls to defend the mosque.
Israeli authorities say they have no intention of changing the status quo, and police are enforcing a prohibition on animal sacrifices. Israel says its security forces were forced to enter the compound early Friday after Palestinians stockpiled stones and other objects, and hurled rocks in the direction of an adjacent Jewish holy site.
The violence in Jerusalem has come in the wake of a series of Palestinian attacks inside Israel that killed 14 people. Israel has launched near-daily arrest raids and other military operations in the occupied West Bank that it says are aimed at preventing more.
The Israeli military said Monday it arrested 11 Palestinians in operations across the occupied West Bank overnight. In a raid in the village of Yamun, near the city of Jenin, the army said dozens of Palestinians hurled rocks and explosives at troops.
Soldiers “responded with live ammunition toward the suspects who hurled explosive devices,” the military said. The Palestinian Health Ministry said two men were hospitalized after being critically wounded.
Two of the attackers came from in and around Jenin, which has long been a bastion of armed struggle against Israeli rule.
At least 25 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press count. Many had carried out attacks or were involved in clashes, but an unarmed woman and a lawyer who appears to have been a bystander were also among those killed.
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