Israel carried out rare airstrikes on Lebanon and bombarded the Gaza Strip on Friday, an escalation that raised fears of a wider conflict after days of violence at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site.
In the following days, there were indications that both sides were trying to keep the hostilities under control.
Fighting on Israel’s northern and southern borders subsided after dawn, and afternoon prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem concluded peacefully.
But a Palestinian shooting attack in the Israeli-occupied West Bank killed two Israeli sisters just hours later – a grim reminder of the combustible situation.
The early-morning Israeli attacks fired an unusually large rocket barrage at Israel from southern Lebanon – some of the heaviest and most serious cross-border violence since Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanese Hezbollah militants.
The violence erupted after Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem earlier in the week, sparking unrest in the disputed capital and sparking outrage across the Arab world.
The Israeli strikes on Friday were designed to avoid drawing in Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia group that Israel views as its most immediate threat.
The Israeli army said its warplanes struck infrastructure belonging to Hamas militants, which it accused of firing nearly three dozen rockets at open areas and towns in northern Israel on Thursday.
Nonetheless, the Israeli military said it believed the Palestinian militants acted with the knowledge of Hezbollah, which dominates much of southern Lebanon.
There were no reports of serious casualties, but several residents of the southern Lebanese city of Qalili, including Syrian refugees, said they suffered minor injuries.
“I immediately gathered my wife and children and took them out of the house,” said Bilal Suleiman, a Kalili resident.
A flock of sheep was killed when Israeli missiles struck a field near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyah, according to an Associated Press photographer.
Other airstrikes hit a bridge and an electricity transformer in nearby Malia and damaged an irrigation system providing water to the gardens.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces destroyed weapons production sites and underground tunnels belonging to Hamas, the militant group that rules the Palestinian enclave.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, a children’s hospital in Gaza City was one of the sites to be damaged. After the counteroffensive, Israelis living on the southern border returned home from bomb shelters.
Most of the missiles that managed to cross into Israeli territory hit open areas, but one landed in the town of Sredot, causing shrapnel to hit a house.
There were no reports of casualties on either side of the southern border.
The Israeli military said everyone wanted to avoid a full-scale conflict.
Spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said, “The silent will be answered by the silent.” A Qatari official said on condition of anonymity that the emirate is mediating to defuse the situation.
Israeli officials said two sisters in their 20s were killed and their 45-year-old mother was seriously wounded in a Palestinian shooting attack in the West Bank near an Israeli settlement in the Jordan Valley.
The settlement’s mayor, Oded Revivi, said all three were residents of the Efrat settlement near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. Revi said the girl’s father was driving a separate car following his wife and daughters and witnessed the attack. Medics said they pulled the unconscious women from their crumpled car, which had been pushed off the road.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant visited the scene late Friday and vowed to capture the attacker. “It is only a matter of time, not much time, until we settle scores,” Netanyahu said.
He also said that his security cabinet had passed several measures overnight. “We acted in Lebanon, we acted in Gaza, we increased forces in the region,” he said, promising additional action.
No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. But Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasim hailed it as “retribution for the crimes committed by Israel in the West Bank and the Al-Aqsa Mosque”.
Jerusalem’s holy site of Al-Aqsa, a tinderbox for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is located on a hill sacred to both Muslims and Jews. In 2021, an escalation triggered by skirmishes there escalated into an 11-day war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
On Friday, more than 130,000 worshipers entered the compound for afternoon prayers, which ended without incident. Before dawn prayers, however, chaos ensued when Israeli police baton-charged a crowd of Palestinian worshipers, who were chanting slogans praising Hamas, as they tried to enter the site.
An hour later, according to the video, people who left the prayer staged a large protest on the limestone courtyard, raising their fists and shouting against Israel. Israeli police forced their way into the compound, stoking tensions during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Police said security forces entered the holy compound after prayers, in response to “masked suspects” who threw stones at officers at a gate.
Israeli authorities control access to the area but the compound is administered by Islamic and Jordanian authorities.
The unrest comes at a delicate time for Jerusalem’s Old City, which was packed with pilgrims from around the world.
Christians are said to retrace the path Jesus took for Good Friday, Jews observe the week-long Passover holiday, and Muslims pray and fast for Ramadan.
The current round of violence began on Wednesday when Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque twice – in one case brutally beating Palestinians, who responded by throwing stones and firecrackers.
This led to rockets fired from Gaza on Thursday and, in an unusual escalation, barrages from southern Lebanon and Israeli retaliation.
Lebanon’s foreign ministry said it had instructed its mission to the United Nations to lodge a complaint with the UN Security Council against “deliberate Israeli bombardment and aggression”, which it characterized as “a flagrant violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty”. Condemned Meanwhile, Israel appealed to the international community to condemn the rockets fired from Lebanon and Gaza and said the violence was incited by Hamas.
It urged UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to issue a Security Council condemnation of Lebanon and Hamas.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen spoke by phone with his counterparts from Turkey and Bahrain – both countries that recently improved ties with Israel – about how to defuse tensions.
Even though a fragile peace was maintained along the borders of Lebanon and Gaza, the West Bank remained unstable. Violence there has reached new highs in recent months, with Palestinian health officials predicting the beginning of 2023 will be the deadliest for Palestinians in two decades.
About 90 Palestinians have died since the beginning of the year from Israeli fire in the West Bank, according to an Associated Press tally.
During that time, 16 people were killed in Palestinian attacks on Israelis – all but one of them civilians. Israel says most of the Palestinian victims are extremists. But youths who pelted stones protesting the intrusion of the police and people who did not participate in the confrontation have also been killed.
Read also: Explainer: Why is Jerusalem the most bitterly disputed holy site on earth?