• Hostilities between Islamic Jihad and the State of Israel, which lasted three days, claimed the lives of 44 Palestinians, including 15 children.

  • A truce was finally negotiated on Sunday evening thanks to Egypt, ending rocket fire from Gaza and Israeli raids.

  • Back on the course of these three bloody days, the worst outbreak of local violence since a short war last year.

Another bloody weekend in Palestine.

Clashes between Islamic Jihad and the State of Israel began on Friday and continued throughout the weekend until a truce was agreed on Sunday, brokered by Egypt, a historic intermediary between Israel and the Palestinians.

Dozens of dead and hundreds of wounded on the side of Gaza, and three wounded on Jewish territory, this is the disastrous assessment of these three days of hostilities.

These raids on the territory of 2.3 million inhabitants, under Israeli blockade, came after the arrest Monday August 1 of a leader of Islamic Jihad in the occupied West Bank, Bassem Saadi.

Since then, the Israeli authorities have feared reprisal attacks from Gaza.

20 Minutes looks

back on the events that shook the region.

Friday: Israel fires on Islamic Jihad and Palestinian response

Around 4 p.m. Friday, Islamic Jihad announced the death of one of its leaders, Tayssir al-Jabari, and four other people, including a 5-year-old girl, killed in Israeli raids.

A few hours later, the toll rose to ten dead and 75 injured.

For its part, Israel claims to have killed 15 fighters from the group listed as terrorist by Israel, the European Union and the United States.

The first salvo of strikes notably targets a residential area in the center of Gaza City.

AFP journalists observe the injured being evacuated by the emergency services, firefighters working to put out fires and residents crowding into morgues.

Reprisals are expected from the side of the Jewish state which warns, moreover, that other raids are in preparation to target Gaza.

“The Zionist enemy started this aggression and must expect us to fight relentlessly,” threatens Islamic Jihad Secretary General Ziad al-Nakhala in an interview with Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV in Tehran. , the Iranian capital.

“Israel has carried out a precise counterterrorism operation against an immediate threat, explains Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on television.

Islamic Jihad is an Iranian proxy that wants to destroy the State of Israel and kill innocent Israelis.

(…) We will do whatever it takes to defend our people.

»

The tension increases during the day.

Israel sends new raids in this "preventive operation".

For its part, the Al-Quds Brigades, a branch of the targeted group, claims to have fired a hundred rockets from Gaza towards Israel.

The Jewish state reports 70 projectiles fired from the Palestinian enclave, eleven of which landed inside Gaza.

The remaining rockets are intercepted by the Israeli missile shield or land in uninhabited areas in Israel.

Saturday: Hostilities continue

The world watches helplessly as the worst outbreak of local violence since a short war last year.

In the early hours of Saturday, Israeli raids continued, while Egypt tried to mediate.

The toll is getting heavier on the Palestinian side, which now deplores 79 injured in the raids, and 11 dead.

Shooting from Gaza also continues, but without causing any casualties or damage, according to the Israeli army.

In the logic of neutralizing the threat, Israel parallel raids in the West Bank which lead to the arrest of "20 people", "of which 19 are members associated with the Palestinian terrorist organization of Islamic Jihad", according to the Israeli army in a press release.

And it does not intend to stop there, planning an operation which must last a week in Gaza, rejecting any negotiation.

In the evening, the Ministry of Health in the Palestinian enclave announces a new toll: twenty-four people including six children have died in the Gaza Strip since the start of the outbreak of violence and 215 have been injured.

The Israeli authorities contradict this assessment and assure that several Palestinian children were killed on Saturday evening by a failed rocket attack from Islamic Jihad towards Israel, and not by the army.

In retaliation, about 400 projectiles - rockets and mortar shells - were launched in twenty-four hours from Gaza, according to an Israeli official making two minor injuries.

Sunday: The balance sheet increases but a truce is negotiated

Second victory for Tel Aviv.

Oded Basiok, the head of the operations department of the Hebrew state army, affirms in the night from Saturday to Sunday that “the senior management of the military wing of Islamic Jihad in Gaza has been neutralized”.

The operation is also continuing in the West Bank where around twenty members of the group were arrested overnight by the Israeli security forces.

On the Palestinian side, the corpses add up.

There are now 31 people including six children killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the outbreak of violence according to the Ministry of Health in the Palestinian enclave, which specifies that the Israeli strikes have also injured 215.

In retaliation, rockets are fired at Jerusalem.

While Israel accepts the terms of a truce negotiated by Egypt in the afternoon, raids continue on Gaza pending the response of Islamic Jihad and the toll is increasingly heavy: now "41 Palestinians martyred, including 15 children and four women, and 311 were injured” in the Gaza Strip, according to the Ministry of Health.

A few hours later, it rises to 43 dead.

But the promise of a return to calm is recorded.

Islamic Jihad accepts the proposed truce which is to begin in the evening.

The group nevertheless reserves "the right to respond to any [new] Israeli aggression".

Our dossier on Gaza

The truce is however not respected.

The Israeli army claims to have carried out strikes on Islamic Jihad positions in Gaza, a few minutes after the entry into force of the agreement, accusing the enemy of having fired rockets.

Calm returned thereafter, until the reopening on Monday morning of the crossing points between the Jewish state and the Gaza Strip “for humanitarian needs”.

During these three days, "44 Palestinians fell as martyrs, including 15 children" and "360 were injured", according to a latest report from the ministry, which also reported on entire buildings destroyed in the strikes.

On the Israeli side, there are three wounded.

World

Israel: Hamas threatens the country with a "great battle" for Jerusalem

World

Israeli-Palestinian conflict: What we know about the clashes that took place inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem

  • Gaza

  • Israelo-Palestinian conflict

  • Israel

  • Middle East