Israel announced overnight from Saturday to Sunday that it had hit Syria in response to rocket fire on the annexed part of the Golan Heights, following similar shelling from neighboring Lebanon and the Gaza Strip in recent days.
These shots, which were not immediately claimed, are the latest episode of heightened violence in the Middle East. Three people were killed in two anti-Israeli attacks on Friday.
“Artillery is hitting the region of Syria from which rockets were fired,” the Israeli army reported, saying it also used a drone.
According to the army, at least one missile was intercepted by Israel’s anti-aircraft system and two fell in badlands in the Golan Heights, part of which Israel captured and then annexed from Syria in 1967.
It is a strategic region patrolled by their soldiers and also borders Lebanon.
tensions
These exchanges of fire follow an unprecedented escalation on the Israeli-Lebanese front since 2006. Around thirty rockets were fired from Lebanon at Israel on Thursday, injuring one person and causing property damage.
The Israeli army said the shooting, which was not claimed, was “Palestinian” and most likely the Islamist movement Hamas, which is in power in the Gaza Strip.
She responded with strikes in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon.
Israel and Lebanon are technically at war following various conflicts, and the ceasefire line is controlled by the United Nations Interim Force (UNIFIL), which is based in southern Lebanon.
On the Syrian side, Israel has recently intensified its raids, specifically targeting the positions of pro-Iran groups, its main enemy.
Two fatal attacks
On Friday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “ordered the police to mobilize and mobilize all border police reserve units [l’armée] to mobilize additional forces” following a car attack on Tel Aviv’s beach promenade.
The attack, which took place on a Sabbath evening and during Passover week, killed an Italian tourist and wounded seven others, ranging in age from 17 to 74.
Police said the 45-year-old driver who was shot was from the Arab town of Kfar Kassem in central Israel.
Earlier on Friday, two sisters from the Israeli settlement of Efrat, aged 16 and 20, with Israeli and British nationalities, were killed and their mother seriously injured in a Palestinian attack on their car in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967.
Israel Police said four reserve border police battalions would be deployed to city centers on Sunday, in addition to those already mobilized in the mixed city of Lod and the Jerusalem region.
The Defense Ministry confirmed on Saturday night that it was mobilizing soldiers to support the police and announced it would tighten entry restrictions for Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, particularly workers, into Israel.
violence in a mosque
Indeed, the current fever outbreak follows Wednesday’s violence on the Esplanade of Mosques, Islam’s third holiest site and Judaism’s holiest site, also the epicenter of tensions in the Holy City.
Israeli forces brutally stormed into the Al-Aqsa Mosque to evict the devotees who had gathered for night prayers in the middle of Ramadan, eliciting numerous condemnations.
Mr Netanyahu claimed the armed forces were “forced into action to restore order” in the face of “extremists” barricaded themselves inside the mosque. Hamas, which has waged several wars against Israel, denounced an “unprecedented crime”.
Qatar, which previously mediated between Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas, “is working on de-escalation,” a Qatari official told AFP on Friday on condition of anonymity.
Since early January, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of at least 92 Palestinians, 18 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian, according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
These figures include fighters and civilians, including minors, on the Palestinian side, and mostly civilians, including minors, and three members of the Arab minority on the Israeli side.