Israel and Gaza Strip Militants Brace for More Rockets, Airstrikes

Israel and Gaza Strip-based militants are digging in for extended fighting after a barrage of hundreds of rockets and retaliatory airstrikes boiled over into a second day, threatening to undo months of Egyptian-brokered efforts to reach a long-term truce.

Israel resumed its assassination of wanted men in the Palestinian enclave Sunday, after a years-long lull. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he instructed the army to continue its “massive attacks” in Gaza and bolster forces near the coastal strip.

Militant groups, who want Israel to do more to alleviate the misery in blockaded Gaza, threatened to send rockets deeper into Israeli territory as important dates on Israel’s calendar approach. Israel commemorates its memorial and independence days this week, and militants have vowed to ruin the May 18 Eurovision song contest in Tel Aviv. Canceling the competition -- or holding it under rocket fire -- could harm Israel’s effort to showcase itself as a top-tier tourist destination.

“They thought that because it’s before the Memorial Day of Israel and the Independence Day of Israel and the Eurovision which is in a week or two in Israel, Israel will not retaliate, but it was a huge mistake,” former Israeli National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror said on a press briefing.

At least 10 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed since lower-level fighting on Friday escalated into intense fighting the following day. One fatality was a Gaza man Israel accused of funneling money from Iran to militant groups in Gaza. A Palestinian baby and her pregnant relative were also killed under unclear circumstances.

Rocket bombardments began Saturday morning and more than 450 had been fired by Sunday afternoon. While over 100 were intercepted by missile defense batteries, several hit homes, factories and cars.

In return, Israeli aircraft hit more than 220 targets in Gaza that the army said included military compounds and training camps, naval vessels and weapons facilities. The military also destroyed several tunnels dug by Islamic Jihad to infiltrate Israel, the army said.

For more than a year, Hamas has been sponsoring weekly protests at the border designed to draw attention to the Palestinians’ plight and deflect popular anger over Gaza’s crushing poverty away from Hamas’s own failures and onto Israel. Gaza has been under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade since Hamas wrested control of the territory in 2007, and sanctions imposed by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, which is locked in a power struggle with Hamas, have intensified the strip’s distress.

Despite repeated confrontations this year, the Israeli government and Hamas have refrained from the sort of full-scale wars they’ve waged three times since the militant group seized control of the strip. Israeli officials have said their priority is to confront Iran’s attempts to entrench itself militarily in Syria, on Israel’s northern border, and don’t want to get bogged down in Gaza instead.

Iran has instigated the fighting so “Israel will be busy with and focusing on Gaza and will not have enough energy to deal with the building of the independent Iranian war machine in Syria,” Amidror said.

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