Jerusalem (EFE) from the Strip, while the attempts at a truce foundered again.
Last night, the Egyptian mediators once again presented another proposal for a ceasefire, followed by a pause in the confrontations that raised hopes that the war escalation that today enters its fifth day could end.
The Islamic Jihad canceled this Friday the launch of a volley of rockets scheduled for 9:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. GMT), when it had also called on the Gazans to go out on their rooftops to celebrate with whistles and shouts of “Allaho Akbar” (God is great ), as he did the day before.
This was interpreted as progress in the indirect talks for a truce in Cairo, together with the fact that around the same time the Israeli planes and the drone of drones stopped being heard in the Strip, a calm that lasted for about eight hours.
But at dawn, Israel launched a new bombardment of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (YIP) targets, specifically two “command centers” for senior members of the organization in the Gaza Strip, which were used for “planning and command of terrorist activity against Israel” and to “organize the firing of rockets against Israel,” the Israeli Army reported this morning.
“Seven concealed rocket and mortar launchers were attacked overnight in Gaza, including from those identified as firing into southern Israel yesterday,” a military spokesman added.
The YIP resumed firing rockets
Early this morning, the YIP also resumed firing rockets, raising anti-aircraft alarms in several towns in southern Israel, although yesterday it launched into the center of the country, in the direction of Jerusalem for the first time since the escalation began on Tuesday.
Since that day, the Army has successfully attacked 325 YIP targets -including homes of its members and military installations-, while this group, considered a terrorist by Israel, the US and the EU, has fired 1,099 projectiles from the Strip, including rockets and mortars, of which 865 crossed into Israeli territory.
Israeli anti-missile systems have intercepted 340 rockets, with an effectiveness of 90%, 202 were unsuccessful launches that fell inside the enclave, while most of the rest landed in unpopulated areas of Israel, according to the latest count of the Israeli Army.
Palestinian sources indicate that the YIP did not like the latest proposal because it demands a ceasefire with compromises from Israel, which launched Operation “Shield and Arrow” on Tuesday with the aim of killing three leaders of the group in intense shelling. who also killed ten civilians, including their wives and children.
Since then, Israel has killed another six senior JIP officials, whose leadership inside Gaza has been almost completely eliminated, in this escalation that has killed 33 Palestinians and wounded 147. A woman died in Israel from the impact of a rocket.
Hours before Egypt presented a new proposal for a truce last night, Israel announced yesterday that it was abandoning such talks because it was not willing to give in to the demands of the YIP -among them to stop the “targeted assassination” of its leaders-, to which the group responded by threatening to prolong the escalation beyond a week.
It seems that there is more room for negotiation with another demand from the YIP, the return of the body of Jader Adnan, a leader of the group in the occupied West Bank who died last week in an Israeli jail after 186 days on hunger strike.
His death sparked a brief 24-hour exchange of fire after the YIP fired dozens of rockets in retaliation, to which Israel responded with shelling of the group’s military installations that killed a Gazan civilian by shrapnel.