Jerusalem – The Israeli military said it attacked a Hamas training compound in Gaza on Monday in response to rocket strikes from the Palestinian enclave, which have surged since U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Dec 6.
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Neither side reported any casualties in the overnight shelling exchange, which occurred days before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visits Israel and neighboring Egypt, which also borders Gaza and is involved in its internal politics.
Militants in Gaza, territory controlled by the Hamas Islamist group, have launched more than a dozen rockets into southern Israel over the last two weeks, the most intensive attacks since a seven-week-long Gaza war in 2014.
Two rockets were fired late on Sunday, one of them exploding inside an Israeli border community and the other hitting an open area, the military said. Another rocket launched early on Monday fell short inside Gaza, it said.
Three structures in a Hamas training camp were hit in the Israeli counter-strike, the military said.
Hamas usually evacuates such facilities when tensions rise, and Israel’s choice of the low-profile target appeared to signal a desire to avoid more serious confrontation with the group.
“Israel does not seek escalation,” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said on Army Radio.
But Zeev Elkin, another member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, said in an interview with the radio station that Israel’s military response would “have to be harshened” if the rocket fire did not stop.
Israeli officials have blamed the fire on smaller militant groups in Gaza and called on Hamas to rein them in. Should Hamas fail to do so, both Shaked and Elkin said, Israel could eventually target the group’s leadership for attack.
Sad how the one thing the Orange Yutz tries to do for his ‘beloved’ Yidden is totally screwed up and has caused global outrage and death- and no ‘essy’ peace w Kushie in charge. The Yutz lives up to his name, at Israel’s expense. Sad, so sad. What disaster will he make this week? Feh.
All the liberal ignormauses, anti semites, including UN, EU. etc., who still think a “peace deal” is possible between Israel and the “piece”ful (sic) so called palis, don’t have enough brains (or desire) to understand the failed experiment in Gaza, in which Israel completely relinquished all of it to the enemy, in the hopes that this (yet another) goodwill gesture of handing over precious pieces of Israeli land would turn the terrorists into peaceful neighbors, and how it really turned out (as predicted by every sane, peace loving realist who knows that the palis don’t want peace with Israel , they want to wipe out Israel, with or without the backing of the international community. No amount of land hangovers will satisfy the bloodthirsty savages.