The worst confrontation in the Middle East in the last seven years recurs

The Israeli Army and the Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip maintained yesterday, for the fourth consecutive day, the military escalation that has caused dozens of deaths, while international mediators try to stop what could explode a devastating fourth war with Hamas if Israel applies its plans for a land operation.

For now, Israel announced yesterday a “massive” deployment of security forces in cities with a majority or large Palestinian-Israeli population amid the worst confrontations between its Jewish and Muslim citizens in more than two decades, which add up to a second compared to the attacks in Israel and Hamas, from and against the Gaza Strip.

The worst escalation of violence since the 2014 war has so far left 103 dead in Gaza, including 27 children, 11 women and almost 500 wounded, in addition to another seven dead in Israel, which also mourns the death of a 6-year-old boy and a soldier. Meanwhile, there are heavy riots in mixed cities in Israel, with lynchings between Arabs and Jews at night and in broad daylight.

Violence has spread in Israel like never before since the Palestinian uprising or intifada of 2000, with an explosion of intercommunity clashes that opens a new front that joins that of Gaza and constitutes a serious internal threat.

Palestinians of Israeli nationality and Jewish Israelis are rampaging through the streets, attacking each other and burning properties and cars.

World leaders condemned the violence between Israel and Hamas and called for avoiding a large-scale conflict like those that occurred in the framework of the three major Israeli offensives in Gaza since the Palestinian Islamist group took over the region in 2007.

Visiting the central city of Lod, on the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv and one of the most affected, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned yesterday that he could take severe measures to contain the violence, including a very controversial and so-called administrative detention. , which applies mostly to Palestinians.

It is a practice that consists of detaining a person without charge for up to six months and that dates back to the time when the territory of present-day Israel and the Palestinian Territories were controlled by the British Empire, between 1920 and 1948.

It is one of the worst clashes between its Jewish and Muslim citizens in more than two decades.

For the past four days, Palestinians of Israeli nationality and Jewish Israelis have been walking the streets of these runaway “mixed” cities, attacking each other and burning properties and cars, in a spasm of violence that constitutes a serious existential threat to the internal peace of Israel. since 20% of its citizens are Palestinians.

The situation is all the more dangerous as it coincides with the air offensive launched by Israel on Monday against the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and the hundreds of rocket attacks fired from there towards Israel by the Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, results, in turn, from a wave of clashes in Jerusalem.

While the violence was largely confined to Gaza in the three previous offensives that Israel launched against Hamas in Gaza since 2007, this time – which like the last Intifada, or Palestinian popular uprising, in 2000, began in Jerusalem – it is having much more impact. beyond the Palestinian region.

In a sign of the gravity of the situation, Netanyahu called the violence in Israeli cities “anarchy” and “intolerable” and said he was prepared to fight it with an “iron fist” if necessary, including with a massive and unprecedented. military deployment. Yesterday, Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced that reserve officers from the border guard, which normally operates in the West Bank, the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, will be deployed to cities in the country where Palestinian Israelis and Israelis coexist.

The Palestinian-Israelis are those Palestinians who stayed in their homes, and did not go into exile, when Israel was founded in 1948.

What analysts say about the origin of the conflict

It is difficult to explain the repeated escalations of violence between Jews and Palestinians that have been fighting for more than 70 years. However, for experts, there are several factors that triggered this week a new outbreak of war between neighbors. “This began with the provocations of Palestinians in the Al Aqsa mosque, to which the Israeli police responded aggressively, something that I believe was a mistake,” Meir Elrán, a researcher at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies, told EFE.

Those incidents, he adds, were exploited by different actors, including Hamas in Gaza, which he believes wants to position himself as the leader of the Palestinian resistance by firing rockets, and by Arab and Jewish extremist sectors within Israel, who he says seek to make themselves heard. .

Salim Brake, professor of political science at the University of Haifa, believes that the origin of this wave of violence is deeper, and locates it in the discrimination, both institutional and daily, suffered by Israeli Arabs (indigenous or descendants who remained after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and they have a strong Palestinian identity).

According to him, the Jews who have attacked Arabs in mixed cities in recent days do not belong to marginal groups but represent the majority of society, who “show increasingly right-wing and racist tendencies” and whose “rejection of Arabs and Muslims is evident in every crisis. “

Both analysts agree that the conflict contributed to stirring up the spirits of both Arabs and Jews.

Aftermath of the crisis

Shabtai closes

In the Israeli city of Shabtai, the curfew will once again apply to some 75,000 inhabitants, of which 47,000 are Jews and 23,000 are Palestinians. Residents will only be allowed to leave for medical treatment, bomb shelters, or other vital needs.

1,750 missiles

At least 160 shells were fired yesterday from Gaza into Israeli territory. These shots brought the total number since the start of the conflict to more than 1,750. Of that number, 300 fell inside Gaza and hundreds were intercepted by the Israeli “Iron Dome” anti-missile system.

Targeted attacks

The targets bombed yesterday by Israel also included four apartments used by senior officials in the group for planning operations, an intelligence barracks and the residence of a militiaman who they described as being in charge of the group’s drone unit.