JERUSALEM (AP) — At least one person was killed and five wounded in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian health authorities said Wednesday, following hours of fighting between Palestinian militants and Israel in the coastal enclave after the death of a prominent prisoner on hunger strike.
A tense ceasefire held for a few hours after the Palestinians fired about 100 rockets into southern Israel on Tuesday night. The Israeli army said it had shelled tunnels, weapons production centers and military installations of the Hamas armed group in the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip said Hashil Mubarak, 58, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. His family said that he had been injured by shrapnel and died in hospital.
The cross-border fighting was among the most intense since the 2021 11-day war between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza. They came hours after Khader Adnan, a leader of the Islamic Jihad armed group, died in Israeli custody after nearly three months on a hunger strike. His death sparked a Palestinian general strike and protests in the West Bank and Gaza.
Adnan was credited with helping introduce long hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners as a form of protest, mainly against the practice of administrative detention, which allows Israel to hold people without charge or trial.
The uptick in violence was a test for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Neyanyahu, the most conservative in the country’s history and whose members have called for a strong hand against Palestinian violence.
Government members criticized their own leader’s response to rocket fire from Gaza. Orit Struck, a government minister and a member of the Religious Zionism party, told Kan public radio that Israel had not “taken a price.”
“We have to raid a few buildings in Gaza, and some terrorist bosses have to meet their friend who died in jail,” he said.
In the occupied West Bank, where violence between Israelis and Palestinians has been concentrated for the past year, Israeli troops destroyed the homes of two Palestinians who carried out deadly attacks on Israeli civilians in October and November.
Israel claims the house demolitions are intended to deter future attacks, but critics say they amount to collective punishment against the families of the attackers and only escalate tensions with the Palestinians.
The army said it had destroyed the houses of Mohammed Souf, in the town of Haris, in the northern West Bank. The 18-year-old Palestinian killed three Israelis in a hit-and-run attack at a Jewish settlement last November, before being gunned down at the scene.
The army said it had also demolished the West Bank home of a Palestinian detained on suspicion of stabbing an Israeli man in October. Shalom Sofer later died of his injuries.
Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank have been immersed in an escalation of violence for a year. Some 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire and 49 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.