The escalation continued, for the second consecutive day yesterday, with the intensification of Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip, and the firing of rockets into Israel without any signs of calm, where the Israeli Energy Minister, Yuval Steinitz, said yesterday that Israel is making preparations to expand the military attack on Gaza « Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened the Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza with more strikes if it does not stop firing rockets, while the number of Palestinian martyrs has reached 24 since dawn yesterday.
In detail, a new batch of rockets was fired yesterday at Israel, which responded with new strikes that led to a rise in the number of raids to 24 martyrs, including Islamic Jihad leader Bahaa Abu El-Ata, and his wife, who were martyred in a targeted operation the day before yesterday.
"The number of martyrs has reached 24 since the dawn of yesterday, including a woman, and 72 others were injured," the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said in a brief statement yesterday.
By yesterday morning, Gazans were inspecting the damage and mourning the martyrs.
"There is no talk of mediation, and it is not appropriate to talk about it, while respecting any Arab effort," said Mosab al-Buraim, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad. The «Jerusalem Brigades» claimed responsibility for firing rockets, saying it «natural response to the crimes of the Zionist occupation».
In response to the martyrdom of Abu al-Atta and his wife, Islamic Jihad militants fired about 200 rockets at Israel yesterday, and resumed firing rockets yesterday morning. Despite attempts by diplomats to restore calm, an Islamic Jihad official told Reuters the group had told mediators it planned to continue its retaliatory attacks.
The official, who asked not to be named, that «attempts to restore the calm did not succeed, (Islamic Jihad) believes that the time has come to respond to the policy of assassinations, revived by the Zionist enemy». He added: «The enemy will pay the price of folly, and we are determined to face this aggression with all our strength».
Yet there is no sign that Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is inclined to take part in this battle. Hamas and Israel have managed to calm previous waves of escalation and avert a full-scale conflict over the past five years, having fought three wars between 2008 and 2014.
In contrast, the Israeli army said that a factory for producing warheads for rocket-propelled grenades was targeted in the southern Gaza Strip.
The headquarters of the Khan Younis Brigade for Jihad and a weapons storehouse were also targeted in the house of Adam Abu Hadid, a leader of the Islamic Jihad's rocket system. Palestinian and Israeli media reported that Egypt was conducting intensive talks with Israel and the Palestinian factions in order to stabilize the Gaza Strip.
"We continue to strike (Islamic Jihad) after we have eliminated its senior leader in the Gaza Strip, so they have one option: to stop attacks, or to suffer more strikes," Netanyahu said at the start of the cabinet session. "This is their choice."
"I said yesterday that we are not seeking an escalation, but we are responding to any aggression on us and a very violent response," he said. . "I think that this message is being absorbed by (Islamic Jihad)," Netanyahu said.
"We have destroyed, during the past 24 hours, important targets belonging to the Islamic Jihad," he said. "We targeted cells that planned to fire rockets into the State of Israel, some of which were about to be launched."
Later, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz announced yesterday that Israel was making preparations to expand the military attack on Gaza "including the invasion of the Strip."
"If Hamas does not stop firing rockets into Israel, the ground operation will be on the table," Steinitz told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
The UN special envoy, Nikolai Mladenov, is due to arrive in Cairo for talks to stop the escalation, a diplomatic source said, but a source close to the talks warned that the risk of further escalation remained high. In an unusual sign, Israeli targets were confined to Islamic Jihad positions, not Hamas, in what seemed to have avoided a major escalation. Israeli commentators were quick to focus on this. "For the first time in the current era, Israel distinguishes between Hamas and Islamic Jihad," commentator Ben Caspit wrote in the right-wing Maariv newspaper. "By doing so, Israel has deviated from its iron-covered principle that Hamas, as the ruling power in Gaza, must pay for any action by anyone in the Gaza Strip." That is no longer the case now. ”
For its part, Haaretz wrote that "in the wake of the escalation, Egypt and other international actors worked to calm the region." In the wake of the cycle of violence, international bodies called for calm.