Two attacks in Tel Aviv and the West Bank left a total of three dead and six wounded. These events reignited tension in the region after, in the midst of negotiations, Israel earlier reduced the air alert to put an end to the escalation of violence that included bombing attacks on Gaza and southern Lebanon, following clashes this week between Police and Palestinian worshipers at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
A man ran over people on the waterfront in downtown Tel Aviv with a car on Friday, in an attack that left one dead and at least five injured.
“MDA paramedics pronounced a 30-year-old man dead and are evacuating 5 car hit victims, 3 of them in moderate condition and 2 in mild condition. All are tourists,” Magen David Adom reported on Twitter. MDA), the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross.
The Israeli police told the AFP news agency that it was “a terrorist attack against civilians, hit by a car” and that “the terrorist was neutralized.”
The attack occurred during the night of Shabbat Friday (holy day of the week for Judaism) during the Jewish Passover week.
For its part, the Israeli daily time reported that “the police said they received a report about a vehicle that hit several pedestrians on Kaufmann Street and overturned.”
According to the Ichilov hospital, where the wounded were treated, three of them are British and one Italian, the same nationality as the man who died.
The attacker, identified as Yousef Abu Jaber, a 44-year-old Israeli Arab, had no criminal record and lived in the Arab-majority Israeli city of Kafr Qassem.
The attacker, identified as Yousef Abu Jaber, a 44-year-old Israeli Arab, had no criminal record and lived in the Arab-majority Israeli city of Kafr Qassem.
Israel announced overnight that it ordered the mobilization of reserve police units and additional soldiers to “confront terrorist attacks.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “gave the order to the Israeli police to mobilize all reserve police units at the borders” and to the army “to mobilize additional forces to deal with terrorist attacks,” a statement from his office said.
Islamic Jihad said in a statement that the attack is a “natural and legitimate response to the occupation’s crimes against the Palestinian people,” adding that it occurred on the first anniversary of the terrorist attack on a bar on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv.
Shootings and deaths in the West Bank
Earlier, two British-Israeli sisters, ages 16 and 20, were killed in a shooting attack on their vehicle near a settlement in the northern West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967, while their mother was injured. . The 48-year-old woman is in critical condition, while her father, who was traveling in another vehicle, was unharmed.
The army specified that the car was attacked at the Hamra crossing, in the north of the Jordan River valley.
After this first attack, Netanyahu said that the Israeli security forces “are busy hunting down the terrorists.”
“It is only a matter of time, not a long time, and we will settle the account, as we have done with the other murderers, without exception, in recent months,” said the premier, who visited the site of the first attack together with the Defense Minister. Yoav Gallant, the ANSA news agency reported.
Background and current situation of the conflict
These attacks occurred after the shelling launched by Israel against positions of the Palestinian Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip and in southern Lebanon, in response to the firing of dozens of rockets against the territory of the Hebrew State.
This Thursday, about thirty rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon, in the largest escalation since 2006 on the border between these two countries, which are technically still at war after several conflicts. Since April 2022, no rockets have been launched from Lebanon towards Israel.
According to Israel, the bombings were against “terrorist infrastructures belonging to Hamas”, while according to the Gaza Ministry of Health “damage” occurred in a hospital.
The Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated after the bombardments received that it wants to preserve calm and called on the international community to “pressure Israel to stop the escalation.”
The United Nations Interim Force (UNIFIL), which guards the border between the two countries to guarantee the ceasefire, warned that the situation is “extremely serious” and called for “containment.”
The head of the mission, General Aroldo Lázaro, spoke with authorities in both Israel and Lebanon and “both sides have said they do not want war,” he said in a statement.
The outbreak of violence was triggered after the invasion of the Israeli forces on Wednesday in the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third holy place of Islam, in full celebrations of the Muslim month of Ramadan.
Israel had started the day this Friday with the announcement that it provisionally reduced the air alert in the midst of negotiations mediated by Egypt to end the latest escalation of violence.
The Israeli army had indicated that it could further lower the alert level in the coming hours if there are no more airstrikes in the south of the country, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad informed Egypt, which usually acts as a mediator, that “they are going to to continue with the rocket launches, if Israel continues its aggressions and bombardments”.
According to witnesses, the Israeli Police attacked dozens of faithful this Friday morning who were trying to enter the mosque to perform the Fajr prayer by preventing those under 40 from entering the sacred area, media outlets such as the agency reported. Palestinian Maan or The New Arab news portal.
At least 60,000 Muslims completed this Friday at noon the third Friday of prayers on the occasion of Ramadan in Al Aqsa.
Although the prayer was calm, as it neared its end hundreds of people began waving Palestinian and Hamas flags as well as applauding the attack on the Israeli family, The Times of Israel reported.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa denounced that at least three young Palestinians were injured by shots fired by Israeli forces in the last hours in the West Bank, two of them during a raid in the city of Beit.