The Israeli army and the Islamic Jihad reached a truce yesterday after three days of clashes in the Gaza Strip that have left 41 people dead, of which 11 were children, and 311 wounded, according to the latest balance released by the Ministry of Health of this territory. Egypt, a traditional mediator between Israel and the Palestinian groups, assured that the Israeli army had accepted the ceasefire. The Islamic Jihad, which admitted the existence of negotiations at the highest level, took two hours to confirm the truce. The content is unknown, although Islamist sources mentioned that Egypt had promised to work on the release of two detainees from the Palestinian organization.
Five Palestinians were killed yesterday in the course of army air raids in the Gaza Strip and in the city of Jabaliya, north of the strip.
On Saturday night, the Israeli army carried out a new selective assassination against a senior Jihad commander, Khaled Mansour, who was hiding in a crowded refugee camp in Rafah, south of Gaza. This is the second selective assassination by the Israeli army after it killed another Jihad military commander in this enclave on Friday, Tayssir al Jabari. The Iranian-backed militia has fired hundreds of rockets at Israel in response to the military operation.
Hamas, the group that administers the Gaza Strip and which led an eleven-day war with the Israeli army in May 2021, has remained on the sidelines of the combat, despite publicly expressing its solidarity with the Islamic organization. The causes of the Hamas inhibition may be due both to the fear of Israeli reprisals and to a possible rupture of the economic agreements with Tel Aviv, and in particular to the work permits that allow residents of Gaza to go to work on the other side of the wall.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (1981) was founded in 1981 by students, who later created their military arm. Its size is small when compared to Hamas, but the growing involvement of the latter group in the administration of the territory it theoretically controls has given it a growing role. Jihad is not only present in Gaza, but also in the territories of the occupied West Bank.
Like Hamas, Jihad receives funding from Iran, which has become Israel's number one enemy. And, like Hamas too, Jihad has as one of its founding objectives the end of the State of Israel.
The military operation has been justified by the Israeli Government as preventive in nature, given the alleged knowledge by its information services of the preparation of attacks against Israeli interests.
Israel is in a phase of transition after the unusual coalition government led by Naftali Bennett (which included radical Jewish parties but also an Arab party) finally resigned in the absence of a working majority. The Government's latest project, the renewal of the status by which Israeli settlers in the West Bank evade justice in this territory, could not be approved.
The military intervention may strengthen the options of the current prime minister, and even the resignation of Bennett, number two in the government, the former journalist Yair Lapid, who will face Beniamin Netanyahu next September, a politician with significant influence in conservative sectors . This type of military operation is well received by the orderly sectors of Israeli society.
This transition has also been accompanied by a growing visibility of the most ultra-nationalist Jewish sectors, which accompany their demonstrations with growing hostility towards Palestinian signs of identity, such as the flag.
