Israel Strikes Gaza after Palestinians Launch Incendiary Balloons toward Israel

Israeli army vehicle patrols at the border with the Gaza Strip during clashes between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli troops near Nahal Oz, on the border with Gaza Strip, 22 September 2023. (EPA)
Israeli army vehicle patrols at the border with the Gaza Strip during clashes between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli troops near Nahal Oz, on the border with Gaza Strip, 22 September 2023. (EPA)
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Israel Strikes Gaza after Palestinians Launch Incendiary Balloons toward Israel

Israeli army vehicle patrols at the border with the Gaza Strip during clashes between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli troops near Nahal Oz, on the border with Gaza Strip, 22 September 2023. (EPA)
Israeli army vehicle patrols at the border with the Gaza Strip during clashes between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli troops near Nahal Oz, on the border with Gaza Strip, 22 September 2023. (EPA)

Israel carried out a series of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip late on Friday after Palestinian activists launched incendiary balloons into Israel as a week of violence along the volatile frontier intensified.

The rising tensions along Israel's front with Gaza came as fighting in the occupied West Bank surged — to levels unseen in two decades. In the latest bloodshed Friday, the Israeli army killed a Palestinian militant in the northern West Bank.

Palestinian activists have been protesting for the past week next to the fence separating Gaza and Israel. The protests have turned violent, with demonstrators hurling explosives toward Israeli troops, and soldiers responding with tear gas and live fire.

For the first time in the current round of unrest, Palestinian protesters on Friday launched balloons into Israel, blackening large patches of vegetation on the other side of the border. Palestinian health officials said Israeli fire wounded 28 Palestinians during protests along the barrier.  

Hamas, the movement ruling Gaza since 2007, says youths have organized the protests in response to Israeli provocations.

Unrest over the past week has escalated tensions and prompted Israel to bar entry to thousands of Palestinian laborers from the impoverished enclave.

Palestinians in Gaza have launched balloons in the past to protest an Israeli blockade imposed on the territory since 2007. The balloons have caused fires and scorched Israeli farmland, prompting Israel on several occasions to use fighter jets to strike at Hamas.

The evening airstrikes struck three military posts belonging to Hamas, the army said. Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and engaged in numerous smaller battles since Hamas took over the territory.

Palestinian protesters at the border fence on Friday said they were demonstrating against recent Jewish visits to a disputed holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem. Jews revere the hilltop compound as the Temple Mount, home to the biblical Jewish Temples. Today, it is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Under longstanding arrangements, Jews are allowed to visit the site, but not to pray there. But growing numbers of visits — along with scenes of some Jews quietly praying — have raised Palestinian fears that Israel is plotting to divide or take over the site. Israel says it is committed to the longstanding status quo.

Earlier Friday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian militant in the northern West Bank, Palestinian authorities said. The Islamic Jihad militant group claimed the man as its fighter and identified him as 18-year-old Abdallah Abu Hasan.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Hasan was shot in the abdomen by Israeli forces early Friday morning in a Palestinian village north of the West Bank city of Jenin.

The Israeli army said the shooting occurred during a nighttime raid in Kafr Dan, a town near the militant stronghold of Jenin. It said Palestinians fired at soldiers and threw explosives. Soldiers shot back, hitting Hasan.

The operation was the most recent in a series of stepped-up raids Israel has been staging in Palestinian areas of the West Bank. Israel claims such raids root out militancy and thwart future attacks.

But Palestinians say the raids entrench Israel's 56-year occupation over the West Bank. The raids, which have been escalated over the past year and a half,also show little sign of slowing the fighting.

Some 190 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the year, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Israel says most of those killed have been militants, but youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.

At least 31 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis since the beginning of 2023.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.



Palestinians Mark Nakba amid Mass Displacement in Gaza and West Bank

Palestinians wave national flags as they commemorate the 77th anniversary of the "Nakba" in the city of Ramallah. Zain JAAFAR / AFP
Palestinians wave national flags as they commemorate the 77th anniversary of the "Nakba" in the city of Ramallah. Zain JAAFAR / AFP
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Palestinians Mark Nakba amid Mass Displacement in Gaza and West Bank

Palestinians wave national flags as they commemorate the 77th anniversary of the "Nakba" in the city of Ramallah. Zain JAAFAR / AFP
Palestinians wave national flags as they commemorate the 77th anniversary of the "Nakba" in the city of Ramallah. Zain JAAFAR / AFP

Palestinians on Wednesday commemorated their displacement during the creation of Israel, saying that history was being repeated today in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Tens of thousands have been killed in Gaza and an aid blockade threatens famine, while Israeli leaders continue to express a desire to empty the territory of Palestinians as part of the war sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack.

In the West Bank, too, occupied since 1967, Israeli forces have displaced tens of thousands from refugee camps as part of a major military operation, AFP said.

This year marks the 77th anniversary of the Nakba -- "catastrophe" in Arabic -- which refers to the flight and expulsion of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian flags and black ones branded "return" flew at road intersections, while schoolchildren were bussed into the city center to take part in the weeklong commemoration.

At one event, young boys wearing Palestinian kuffiyeh scarves waved flags and carried a giant replica key, a symbol of the lost homes in what is now Israel that families hope to return to.

No events were planned in Gaza, where more than 19 months of war and Israeli bombardment have left residents destitute.

Moamen al-Sherbini, a resident of the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, told AFP that he felt history was repeating itself.

"Our lives here in Gaza have become one long Nakba -— losing loved ones, our homes destroyed, our livelihoods gone".

Nearly all of Gaza's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during the war between Israel and Hamas.

In early May, Israel's security cabinet approved plans for an expanded military offensive in Gaza, aimed at the "conquest" of the territory while displacing its people en masse, drawing international condemnation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his government is working to find third countries to take in Gaza's population, months after US President Donald Trump suggested they be expelled and the territory redeveloped as a holiday destination.

Speaking from Nuseirat in central Gaza, 36-year-old Malak Radwan said that "Nakba Day is no longer just a memory -- it's a daily reality we live in Gaza. My house was destroyed, now just a pile of stones, and we have no shelter."

'New Nakba every day'

"This is a miserable day in the lives of Palestinian refugees," said 52-year-old Nael Nakhleh in Ramallah, whose family comes from the village of al-Majdal near Jaffa in what is now Israel.

Palestinian refugees maintain their demand to return to the villages and cities they or their relatives left in 1948 that are now inside Israel.

The "right of return" remains a core issue in the long-stalled negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Nakhleh, who lives in the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah, made a point of joining the memorial activities in the city.

"Despite the painful memories, we are still living through a new Nakba every day, through the Israeli attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank," he said.

Israel's military launched a still ongoing large-scale operation in the West Bank in January that has displaced at least 38,000 people, according to the United Nations.

The operation, which Israel says aims to eradicate Palestinian armed groups, has primarily targeted refugee camps in the northern West Bank and involved army evacuation orders and home demolitions.

Wasel Abu Yusef, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee, told AFP that Palestinians "remain more committed than ever to their right of return."