Israel warns it has only just begun as it unleashes new air strikes in Gaza after overnight attacks

Two Israeli women have been killed by Palestinian rocket fire after bombardments left more than 20 dead in Gaza last night.

The rockets were launched from suspected Hamas strongholds in the Gaza Strip and struck the southern town of Ashkelon. The women, one aged in her 40s and the other in her mid-60s, were killed in separate incidents. 

They are the first Israeli fatalities since the cross-border fighting erupted on Monday, with Israeli airstrikes killing at least 24 Palestinians – including nine children – in bombardments overnight and into Tuesday. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the fighting could ‘continue for some time,’ claiming that Hamas had ‘crossed a red line’ by launching rockets at Israel.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters this morning that they were in ‘the early stages’ of strikes against targets in Gaza which had been planned for a long time. 

The cross-border violence has been fuelled by Israel’s evictions of Muslim communities living in east Jerusalem which led to angry riots breaking out on Temple Mount over the weekend, with hundreds left injured on Monday as riot police shot rubber bullets and fired tear gas. 

Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, announced on Tuesday that two of its commanders were killed during continued Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip. 

Sources within the group said the strikes in central Gaza, also ‘wounded eight people, including a woman and her two children.’

The United Nations said it was ‘deeply concerned’ over the escalation of violence in the region, warning Israel that Palestinians must be allowed the freedom to congregate and protest. 

‘We condemn all violence and all incitement to violence and ethnic division and provocations,’ spokesman Rupert Colville told reporters in Geneva today. 

He added: ‘No force should be used against those exercising their rights peacefully.’

When use of force is necessary, it should comply fully with international human rights standards, he added.

Colville said the office of UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet was particularly concerned about the impact of the violence on children.

‘Detained children should be released,’ Colville said. ‘Things need to calm down.’  

Critics say heavy-handed police measures helped stoke nightly unrest, including a decision to temporarily seal off a popular night-time gathering spot where Palestinian residents would meet after evening prayers.

Another flashpoint was the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah where dozens of Palestinians are under treat of eviction by Jewish settlers. 

Over the weekend, confrontations erupted at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in east Jerusalem, which was captured and annexed by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. 

The compound, located in Jerusalem’s Old City, is the third holiest site of Islam and the holiest site of Judaism.

For four successive days, Israel police fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets at Palestinians in the compound who hurled stones and chairs.

Hundreds of Palestinians were hurt, requiring treatment at hospitals. Two dozen officers were also injured. At times, police fired stun grenades into the carpeted mosque.

On Monday evening, Hamas began firing rockets from Gaza, setting off air raid sirens as far as Jerusalem, after giving Israel a deadline to withdraw Israeli security forces from the compound. From there on, the escalation was rapid. 

Speaking of the Israeli response to Hamas’s rocket attacks, army spokesman Conricus said on Monday evening: ‘We have started, and I repeat started, to attack military targets in Gaza.

‘We have made preparations for various scenarios, including high intensity ones… Hamas will get the message.’

Amnesty International said Israel is using ‘abusive and wanton force against largely peaceful Palestinian protesters.’

The London-based human rights group described some of the measures as ‘disproportionate and unlawful’, accusing security forces of ‘unprovoked attacks on peaceful demonstrators’. 

Amnesty said Israel has used excessive force over multiple weeks of east Jerusalem protests.

In one incident, it said Israeli forces last week broke up a peaceful circle of Palestinians chanting against an attempt by Israelis to evict them from their homes in the city’s Sheikh Jarrah district.

Forces on horseback sprinted toward the crowd, trampling a man who was trying to run away, Amnesty said.

The rights group called on the international community ‘to hold Israel accountable for its systemic violations’.

The Israeli police did not respond to specific allegations, but told AFP in an email: ‘We will not allow disturbance of order while harming the fabric of life, inciting to harm police forces and violence against police officers and civilians.’

Police commissioner Kobi Shabtai told Israeli N12 TV on Monday that in Jerusalem in recent days ‘we showed too much restraint’.

‘We are at the stage of taking off the gloves,’ he said. 

The group Save the Children, also based in London, said it was ‘horrified’ by the Israeli air strikes and demanded a stop to ‘the indiscriminate targeting and killing of civilians’.

Israeli army spokesman Conricus said Israel ‘was doing everything possible to limit collateral damage’ and he said there was no confirmation Israeli strikes had impacted Gaza civilians.

Diplomatic sources told AFP that Egypt and Qatar, who have mediated past Israeli-Hamas conflicts, were attempting to calm tensions 

In perhaps the most serious incident of clashes today, CCTV captured the moment crowds of Palestinians pelted a car driving near Jerusalem’s Old City with rocks before the Israeli driver accelerated on to the pavement – sending people flying. 

People continued to pelt the driver after the car came to a halt, suspended on a nearby wall, before a gun-waving police officer arrived. The officer helped the man from the car, before he was again attacked by a pedestrian.

Police then cancelled a right-wing Israeli march that was due to pass through the Old City and its Muslim Quarter in an effort to calm tensions.

The fighting has drawn calls for de-escalation from the international community and sharp rebukes from across the Muslim world.

In Washington, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration, including President Joe Biden himself, was monitoring the violence.

‘We have serious concerns about the situation, including violent confrontations that we’ve seen over the last few days,’ she told reporters. The U.S. Embassy in Israel said the rocket fire was ‘unacceptable.’

The Israeli military said well over 50 rockets were fired into Israel throughout the evening, most of them aimed at southern Israeli towns near the border.

Lieutenant Colonel Conricus said six rockets were aimed at Jerusalem, some 60 miles (100 kilometers) away. It was believed to be the first rocket attack on the city since a 2014 war. 

Shortly after the sirens sounded, explosions could be heard in Jerusalem. One rocket fell on the western outskirts of the city, lightly damaging a home and causing a brush fire. The Israeli army said one rocket was intercepted and the others fell in open areas. 

Israel then responded with airstrikes on Hamas targets throughout Gaza. 

Seven members of a family, including three children, were killed in a blast in the northern town of Beit Hanoun. It was not immediately clear if the blast was caused by an airstrike or errant rocket.

Ashraf al-Masri, a member of the family, said there was an explosion outside the house.

‘We don’t know where it came from,’ he said. ‘We are trying to get the children for burial but the situation is difficult in Beit Hanoun and we are afraid to leave our houses.’

Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, said the attack on Jerusalem was a response to what he called Israeli ‘crimes and aggression’ in the city. ‘This is a message the enemy has to understand well,’ he said.

He threatened more attacks if Israeli forces re-enter the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque compound or carry out planned evictions of Palestinian families from an east Jerusalem neighbourhood.

Fears of further chaos in the Old City had eased somewhat today when Israeli organisers cancelled a march to celebrate the Jewish state’s 1967 capture of east Jerusalem that was due to pass through the Old City.

But then came the Hamas warning, followed shortly after by the rockets.

‘An alarm has just been sounded in Jerusalem. Police forces have begun evacuating hundreds of people’ gathered at the Wailing Wall to safer locations, police said in a brief statement.

Hamas has fired several rockets towards Israel in recent days, some intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system, while militants in Gaza have deployed incendiary balloons that have sparked dozens of fires in Israeli territory.

Israel’s army earlier announced widespread road closures in communities near the Gaza border, following a ‘situational assessment’, and two municipalities near Gaza, Ashkelon and Kyriat Malachi, confirmed that they had opened their bomb shelters.

Monday’s clashes mark the fourth straight day of fighting between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in Jerusalem, the most serious period of violence the city has seen since 2017. 

Tensions between the two sides had been simmering since mid-April because Israeli forces had restricted access to the Al Aqsa Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan.

But the clashes suddenly escalated on Friday with violence in and around the mosque, which drew more people on to the streets. Protesters have also been angered by a long-running court battle between Jewish settlers and Palestinian homeowners in east Jerusalem, where the Old City is located.  

A court that was due to rule on the issue today has postponed the date.    

The leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, Bezalel Smotrich, announced a visit Monday to the tense Sheikh Jarrah district which is at the centre of property disputes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday defended Israel’s response to the protests and rioting.

‘We will uphold law and order – vigorously and responsibly,’ Netanyahu said while vowing to ‘guard freedom of worship for all faiths’. 

Monday’s clashes broke out after Palestinians gathered around the Al-Aqsa Mosque in anticipation of the arrival of the Jerusalem Day march, which is due to end at the nearby Dome of the Rock.

Israeli security forces said demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the mosque, and officers were sent in to clear them out. Rocks were thrown at police, who opened fire with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Witnesses said some of the tear gas grenades landed inside the mosque. The BBC also reported confrontations in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, and near the West Bank city of Ramallah. 

The scenes around Al-Aqsa Mosque mirror those which took place on Friday and have seen Israeli forces criticised for heavy-handed tactics. 

All six Arab nations that have diplomatic ties with Israel – Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan – have condemned the Jewish state.

In Jordan, the custodian of Jerusalem’s holy Islamic and Christian sites, King Abdullah II condemned ‘Israeli violations and escalatory practices at the blessed Al-Aqsa mosque’.

Jordan and Egypt both summoned Israeli envoys on Sunday to lodge protests.

Tunisia said the UN Security Council was to hold a closed-door meeting Monday, at its request, on the violence.

The Middle East quartet of envoys from the European Union, Russia, the United States and the United Nations – and Pope Francis – have all called for calm.

‘Israeli authorities must exercise maximum restraint and respect the right to freedom of peaceful assembly,’ UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.  

The UN children’s agency UNICEF said that over two days, 29 Palestinian children had been injured in east Jerusalem, including a one-year-old.

The unrest of past weeks in east Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as their future capital, has multiple causes.

Much of the recent violence stems from a long-running legal effort by Jewish settler groups to evict several Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah.

A lower court ruling earlier this year backing the settlers’ decades-old claim to the plots infuriated Palestinians.

A Supreme Court hearing on a Palestinian appeal had been set for Monday, but the justice ministry said Sunday that in light of ‘all the circumstances’ it would delay the hearing.

Old City shopkeeper Mohammad said Israeli police told him he must close Monday afternoon, when Israeli Jews plan to march with Israeli flags to mark Jerusalem’s ‘reunification’.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem following the 1967 takeover, a move not recognised by most of the international community.

The unrest has spread across the Palestinian territories, including demonstrations and clashes in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has expressed ‘full support for our heroes in Al-Aqsa’.

Hamas Islamists who control the Gaza Strip have also voiced support for the Palestinian protesters and warned Israel of retribution if evictions proceed in Sheikh Jarrah.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh called Sunday for a united Arab and Muslim response against Israel’s ‘provocative desecration of the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque’.

Four rockets were fired from Gaza towards Israel on Sunday, the army said, as well as incendiary balloons that started 39 fires on Israeli territory, according to the fire services.

The Israeli military said late Sunday that ‘tanks just struck Hamas terror targets in Gaza’, without giving further details.