According to Egyptian negotiators, Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group agreed to a ceasefire on Saturday, ending five days of violence that left 35 people dead.
Egyptian officials said representatives of Israel and Islamic Jihad, an Islamist group based in Gaza, had agreed to cease fighting. The parties confirmed that a ceasefire was reached, but. The gunfights continued for at least 30 minutes after the deal went into effect at 10pm local time.
According to local Arab news agencies, Israel and Islamic Jihad have agreed to a cease-fire on civilians and the destruction of homes. But one Western diplomat, familiar with the negotiations, said the ceasefire was made without conditions – as Israel had requested – and based on the principle that calm is answered with calm.
Five days of fighting, the longest cross-border violence between Israel and the group in recent years, has remained relatively contained. Jihad, a small Iran-backed militant group, has failed to woo Hamas – the more powerful Islamist militant organization that controls Gaza – or any of the other major factions. Islamic Jihad fighters, alone on the battlefield, have suffered fatal blows.
Some experts argue that the tolerance of Islamic Jihad – which Israel, the United States and many other Western nations classifies as a terrorist organization – is the fact that, unlike Hamas, it does not suffer any responsible for the population than two poor people in Gaza. million people. Instead, it focuses solely on the long-term goal of replacing Israel with an Islamic state.
Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian expert on national security in East Jerusalem, said of jihad: “It exists only for one purpose: to fight and ‘liberate’ the country.
“They have no ministerial or parliamentary seats and no privileges other than to die,” he said, adding that the group has earned the respect of many Palestinians, who sympathize with the Gazans living under a strict blockade on land, in the air and at sea. by Israel and Egypt.
Israel also asserts that Iran, the patron of Islamic Jihad, set the agenda while the group’s leaders lived in exile. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, said last week that the group’s leaders were “living in hotels in Beirut and Damascus and driving Mercedes” while on the Iranian payroll. , “it’s okay with the bleeding in Gaza”.
Previous skirmishes between Israel and the Islamic Jihad — in April, last August and November 2019 — all ended in about 50 hours or less.
But in a television interview in October, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the leader of the exiled Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said the group had made a “strategic mistake” two months earlier by agreeing to a ceasefire. after 50 hours, under local and regional direction. pressure. He said they could have continued to fight and achieve “concrete results on the ground”.
This time, Israel argued that it was ready for an unconditional ceasefire, but it also said it was ready to continue its offensive. For its part, the Islamic Jihad organization cited “the great support of the loyal masses” on Saturday and said that “the resistance has prepared itself for months of confrontation.”
Two key events on the calendar next week are likely to garner wider Arab support for the group’s goal.
On Monday, Palestinians and their supporters will mark the 75th anniversary of the so-called Nakba, or “disaster,” in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees fled or were expelled from their homes during the conflict. war surrounding the founding of Israel in 1948. Then, then next week, tens of thousands of Israeli nationalists are expected to march through Jerusalem’s Old City’s Muslim Quarter in a parade annually commemorates Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 war.
After firing rockets towards Jerusalem on Friday, Dawoud Shehab, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, told a local Arabic-language news agency, “The battle is approaching the time of the march – that’s what’s motivating. we continue to.”
The warring parties exchanged gunfire on Saturday before the deal went into effect. The Israeli military said it hit Islamic Jihad rocket and mortar launch sites as well as what it described as two of the group’s command centers located in residential homes. And sirens blared in southern and central Israel, warning of incoming salvoes even in the hours before the ceasefire was scheduled to take effect.
In the past five days, Islamic Jihad has fired more than 1,200 rockets and mortars towards Israel, and Israel has hit more than 370 affiliated targets in Gaza, according to data released by the military. Israeli authorities also said the group fired dozens of mortar shells towards areas near the border between Israel and Gaza, preventing the movement of most people and goods.
The Palestinian Health Ministry reports at least 33 people have been killed in Gaza, many of them civilians, since the operation began and more than 100 people have been injured. In Israel, an elderly woman was killed on Thursday when a rocket launched from Gaza hit an apartment complex in central Israel. Israel’s ambulance service reported eight people injured by shrapnel and debris, three of whom were injured by a rocket fired into southern Israel on Saturday, two of them seriously. Two of the three are Palestinian workers from Gaza. One of the workers from Gaza later died in the hospital.
Israeli officials say the decision to launch the offensive against the leaders of Islamic Jihad was made on May 2, the day the group fired more than 100 rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel after attack. The death of a Palestinian hunger strike in Israeli custody, Khader Adnan, who is protesting the detention. Mr. Adnan is an Islamic Jihad leader from the occupied West Bank. That night, Israel carried out a number of initial airstrikes in Gaza that left one person dead.
Israeli officials said the operation began Tuesday aimed at weakening Islamic Jihad, a goal they achieved in the first seconds of the operation and restoring stability to the region. The opening attacks killed three top Islamic Jihad commanders and 10 civilians, including children, according to Palestinian health officials. Three more key commanders of the group were killed in subsequent attacks over the past week.
Israel’s chief of staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, said on Saturday that the continued offensive by Islamic Jihad has helped Israel “continue to achieve further achievements”.
The United States has supported Israel’s right to self-defence against indiscriminate rocket fire by Islamic Jihad, while stressing the urgency of reaching a ceasefire.
At first, Islamic Jihad offered a number of conditions for a ceasefire, including an Israeli commitment to stop assassinations; the burial of Mr. Adnan’s body; and canceled the Jerusalem flag parade – conditions Israel refused.
Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Gaza City and Carol Sutherland from Moshav Ben Ami, Israel.
