Violence Resumes In Gaza Strip Despite Efforts To Reach Cease-fire

The Israel Defense Forces resumed strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip Tuesday night and into early Wednesday as a flurry of rockets was fired into southern Israel, including two toward the city of Ashkelon that were intercepted by Iron Dome. The exchange was less intense than that of the previous night, when the Israel Air Force destroyed numerous high-profile sites in Gaza, including a “secret” Hamas headquarters and the office of the terror group’s leader, Ismael Haniyeh. During that offensive, which came in response to a rocket attack Monday morning that wounded at least seven civilians in central Israel, Hamas and other armed groups in the Palestinian enclave launched more than 60 projectiles at the Jewish state. An unnamed senior Hamas official told the Israeli daily Israel Hayom that Iran had ordered the launch of Monday’s rocket, which crashed into a house over 60 miles away. The official said the order was given to an Islamic Jihad cell in the coastal enclave, although Hamas’s leadership was aware of it. As mediators attempt to forge an elusive long-term cease-fire, much of the attention now turns to Friday, when Hamas hopes to draw tens of thousands of Gazans to the border with Israel to mark the one-year anniversary of the “March of Return,” the name given to weekly protests at the border fence that have invariably descended into clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops. The Friday demonstration coincides with “Land Day,” which commemorates an incident in 1976 in which Israeli police killed six Arab citizens protesting the government’s expropriation of Arab-owned land for military purposes. Since then, on every anniversary, mass protests – some of them deadly – have been staged by Israeli-Arabs, but also by Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.