Members of the Palestinian security forces walk amid debris following an Israeli air strike in the southern Gaza Strip near the town of Rafah yesterday.
Agencies/Gaza City
Israel and Palestinian militants appeared to be pulling back yesterday from further hostilities after Israel responded with air strikes to a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip.
No casualties were reported on either side of the border, and Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon blamed the rocket launching late on Tuesday on “elements in the Islamic Jihad” group in the Hamas -run enclave.
His comments followed Israeli media reports that infighting among Islamic Jihad militants may have precipitated the rocket firing without the permission of Hamas authorities.
The reports also said that Hamas, whose forces are dominant in the territory of 1.8mn Palestinians, had arrested Islamic Jihad members behind the missile strike, the deepest into Israel since the end of last year’s 50-day Gaza war.
Islamic Jihad denied that its men fired the missile.
“I affirm that the Islamic Jihad hasn’t fired any rocket from Gaza,” said Khader Habib, a senior leader of the movement in Gaza.
Hamas said its armed wing did not fire the missile either.
“The Palestinian factions are committed to the ceasefire agreement” of August 2014, said Ismail Radwan, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza.
The projectile struck near the Israeli port city of Ashdod, some 20km from the Gaza frontier, Israeli security forces said, and hours after the attack there was still no claim of responsibility.
Israeli warplanes hit back early yesterday, striking four “terror infrastructures” in the southern Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said. Gaza residents said the targets included training camps used by Islamic Jihad militants.
No further fighting was reported, and it appeared that Israel chose to attack evacuated or open areas in a signal to Hamas that it hoped to avoid escalation.
It also issued a warning that further rocket strikes would draw a more powerful response.
“If there is no quiet in Israel, the Gaza Strip will pay a very heavy price, which will cause anyone planning to challenge us to regret their actions,” Yaalon said in a statement.
In comments posted on a pro-Hamas website, Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the group, said Israel was responsible for “the escalation last night and it must stop these foolish acts”.
The Arab League condemned the Israeli air strikes.
“The extremist Israeli government is trying to find pretexts to divert the international community’s attention from resuming (peace) negotiations,” Arab League deputy head Ahmed bin Heli told reporters in Cairo.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that his forces would “do whatever is needed to maintain calm” along the border with Gaza.
Netanyahu reiterated Israel held Hamas responsible for any fire from the enclave.
“The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) took immediate and strong action in response to this firing. This is our policy,” he told a visiting US senator in Jerusalem.
The air strikes were the first since December, which at that time came in response to sniper fire and a shorter range rocket.
Last year, militants in Gaza launched thousands of rockets and mortar bombs into Israel during a July-August war in which Israeli shelling and air strikes battered the small, coastal Palestinian enclave.
The region has been largely quiet since an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that halted seven weeks of fighting.
lIsraeli President Reuven Rivlin appeared to challenge a long-standing taboo on talks with Hamas yesterday, saying he favoured dialogue with everybody.
The role of president is largely ceremonial, but during a tour of northern Israel a reporter asked Rivlin his opinion on talks with Hamas.
“It is really not important to me with whom I speak, but rather about what we are speaking,” he replied in remarks broadcast on television and radio.
“I have no aversion to holding negotiations with anyone who is prepared to negotiate with me,” he said.
“The question is what they want to negotiate about. If they want to negotiate my very existence, then I would not negotiate with them.”
