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Israel’s defense minister signaled Friday that the military would stop its airstrikes if Palestinian militant groups halted rocket attacks, a day after the deadliest Israeli raid in decades raised the prospect of a major flare-up in fighting.
After a limited exchange of Palestinian rockets and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza overnight, residents of Jerusalem were on edge Friday morning as they waited to see what comes next.
Israel’s defense minister instructed the military to prepare for new strikes in the Gaza Strip “if necessary.”
The bombardments followed an Israeli raid in the flashpoint Jenin refugee camp, which turned into a gun battle that killed at least seven militants and a 61-year-old woman.
The raid sparked clashes elsewhere during which Israeli forces killed a 22-year-old in al-Ram, a Palestinian town north of Jerusalem. At the funeral in al-Ram, crowds of Palestinians carried the young man’s body aloft and waved the flags of both Fatah, the party that controls the Palestinian Authority, and militant Hamas, angrily chanting for revenge. Two other Palestinians were killed in fighting the previous day.
The escalation in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict created an early test for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right government, which came to office as tensions with the Palestinians soared and has vowed to take a hard line.
The raid also prompted the Palestinian Authority to halt security coordination with Israel and drew “deep concern” from the State Department just days before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was expected to visit the region.
So far, the hostilities have followed a familiar pattern that allows both sides to respond without forcing the other side into a major escalation. Palestinian militants fired rockets from Gaza toward the south of Israel. Israel retaliated with nonlethal airstrikes on militant targets in Gaza, such as training camps and an underground rocket manufacturing site.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed the military dealt a “tough blow” to Palestinian militants in Gaza and said the army was preparing to strike “high-quality targets … until peace is restored to the citizens of Israel.”
An uneasy calm prevailed around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, revered by Jews as Temple Mount.
