FROM THE ENCOUNTER IN BEIRUT. Hamas fired hundreds of rockets at Beersheva, Ashdad and Ashkelon this night and early in the morning. Some houses have been hit but there are no casualties or injuries. Israeli raids continued to hit the militants’ infrastructure, but a three-story building in the Shati refugee camp was also destroyed, two women and eight children died under the rubble. The situation in the Arab-Israeli suburbs is also serious. In Jaffa, Jewish extremists threw a Molotov cocktail at two boys, a 12-year-old is in serious condition. A fifteen-year-old was instead injured by the police in Lod. Internal services, Shin Bet, arrested Kamal al-Khatib, deputy leader of the Islamic Movement, the formation that created the second Arab party in the Knesset. After the arrest, the population took to the streets in Kafr Kana, with harsh clashes and 28 injured.
Pressure on the borders
In the West Bank, new demonstrations are expected in the afternoon for the Nakba, the “catastrophe”, as the Palestinians define the birth of Israel and the expulsion of 700,000 Arab inhabitants to neighboring countries. Yesterday there were the “toughest clashes since the Second Intifada of 2000”, said sources of Al-Fatah. Eleven protesters were killed, over 500 injured. Israeli border police and security forces fired live bullets, especially when a march in Jericho tried to join other demonstrators of Palestinian origin on the other side of the border in Jordan. The diaspora is very important in this country, where half of the population is of Palestinian origin. Demonstrations are also planned on the borders of Syria and Lebanon, where yesterday a Hezbollah militant was killed by Israeli fire after he tried to force the border.
Fourfold front
Israel therefore found itself facing a fourfold front, which unites four Palestinian populations with hitherto very different destinies. For the first time, the Arab-Israelis, 1.9 million, joined together in the protests. They are the ones in the best condition, on paper with equal rights to Israelis of Jewish origin. In reality, they feel like second-class citizens and the situation has worsened with the pandemic and the spread of petty crime, little opposed by the Israeli police. Then there are the 350,000 inhabitants of Jerusalem, with special status but without citizenship, under pressure to expand the settlements. They are at the center of the protests for the “defense of Al-Aqsa”, especially after the attempt to expel some families from the suburb of Sheikh Jarah, the spark that sparked the new crisis. Alongside there are the 2.9 million in the West Bank, without citizenship and with the prospect of having their own independent and democratic state demolished by the Trump plan, by the Abrahamic Agreements but also by the gerontocracy of the Palestinian Authority, which has postponed for the umpteenth time the elections scheduled for May 15. Finally, 2 million live in Gaza, without the possibility of movement and governed by the extremist group of Hamas.