High regional tension at the beginning of a week – in the middle of Passover and Ramadan – that begins as the last one ended. In just five days, since April 6, the area has experienced the launches of about a hundred rockets fired into Israeli territory from southern Lebanon and Gaza, as well as against the Golan Heights from Syria, the Israeli armed response against targets located in the aforementioned territories, terrorist attacks in the West Bank and Tel Aviv – with a balance of four fatalities in addition to the assailant killed – and the death this Monday of a Palestinian teenager in a raid carried out by Israeli soldiers near Jericho.
The trigger for the spiral last weekend had been the double invasion, last week, of the Israeli security forces in Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. And all this in the wake of several days of massive protests against the proposal to reform the judicial system promoted by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who admitted over the weekend the seriousness of the moment for his country. The perfect storm for the region to be drawn into full-scale conflict in the near future.
After the Israeli bombardments on Sunday against military objectives of the Syrian Armed Forces – in response to the launch of several rockets at the Golan Heights on the eve -, on the morning of this Monday a 15-year-old Palestinian died after being shot multiple times by Israeli forces during clashes in a refugee camp near Jericho.
Israeli military sources confirmed the operation in Aqabat Jaber to “arrest a terrorist suspect” who will be prosecuted and the outbreak of “violent riots in various places.” Hours earlier, a soldier and an Israeli officer were slightly injured during an operation in Nablus. Meanwhile, yesterday morning the news of the death of the mother of the two British-Israeli young women shot dead in an ambush suffered on a road near the settlement of Hamra, in the northeast of the West Bank, on Friday morning. The mother of the two deceased sisters died three days later in a hospital in the area, victim of gunshot wounds suffered at the hands of a Palestinian gunman according to initial investigations.
In less than a week Israel has suffered the simultaneous Hamas attacks from southern Lebanon –This Thursday was the biggest offensive from that country since 2006– and the Gaza Strip and militias –investigations point to the Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad– based on Syrian soil. A coordinated offensive – to which Tel Aviv has responded in a contained manner – that cannot be linked to chance: Israel is experiencing a moment of high domestic tension; meanwhile, its archenemy, the mullah theocracy in Iran, is spurred on by the deal reached with Saudi Arabia under Chinese auspices, and Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship continues to move towards its full rehabilitation. A scenario that seriously compromises the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabiawhich a few months ago seemed very close, and confirms the loss of US influence in the region.
No organization has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Hamas has welcomed them. Hezbollah, an ally of the Damascus and Tehran regime, has so far avoided breaking its silence, although nothing moves in southern Lebanon without the consent of the organization led by Hassan Nasrallah.
The spiral of the last week confirms a particularly bloody start to the year. These are the most violent months of the conflict since 2000: 96 Palestinians and Arab-Israelis have died in violent incidents with Israel and also 18 people on the Israeli side (figures that rise to 250 Palestinians killed between combatants and civilians and more than 40 Israelis if take the last year). A situation that goes back to the Second Intifada and coincides with the arrival of the current Israeli Government, the most nationalist and religious in its recent history.
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