Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system intercepts rockets fired from Gaza City over the southern city of Sderot on May 13, 2023. MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP
A ceasefire came into effect on Saturday evening, May 13, after five days of rocket fighting between the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza that have left 35 people dead since Tuesday.
Egypt, a traditional mediator between the belligerents, has obtained the parties’ agreement to a ceasefire that begins as early as 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Paris), according to Mohammad Al-Hindi, a senior official with the Islamic Jihad militant group in Gaza . to the Al Kahera Wal Nas channel. “We would like to thank Egypt for its efforts,” Mohammad al-Hindi told AFP.
According to journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Gaza, dozens of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip in the last half hour before the ceasefire came into effect, many of which were intercepted by Israeli air defenses, which were conducting new airstrikes on Palestinian territories and witnesses.
After 10 p.m., a few more rockets were fired, followed by renewed Israeli attacks before calm appeared to return and hundreds of people began to appear in the streets of the several-day-abandoned Gaza Strip.
Palestinians inspect the rubble of the house of Islamic Jihad member Zeyad Selmi after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City May 13, 2023. FATIMA SHBAIR / AP
Deadly escalation
After that deadly escalation, the most violent between Gaza and Israel since August 2022, which began Tuesday with airstrikes that killed three military commanders of Islamic Jihad, a movement it has labeled “terrorist,” Israel has made no announcement signing a ceasefire agreement could be officially confirmed “both by the United States and the European Union and by Israel.
For residents of the Gaza Strip, time ticked by the rhythm of the Israeli airstrikes, while residents in Israeli areas bordering the fence surrounding the thin coastal area were fixated on the sound of anti-missile sirens and stationed in makeshift shelters.
Shortly before the ceasefire was announced, Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi expressed his satisfaction that Israel had “achieved important goals in this campaign”. [qui] have only increased in both number and scope’, and that ‘the shootings [de roquettes] the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad [avait permis à l’armée] to further extend the lead.
Smoke and fire rise from an explosion caused by an Israeli airstrike on a building in Gaza May 13, 2023. ASHRAF AMRA/AP
Earlier, the Al-Quds Brigades, Islamic Jihad’s military wing, announced the continuation of their “missile fire on” Israeli cities “in the face of ongoing Israeli killings and bombings.”
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In Gaza, an area that has been under an Israeli blockade since the Islamist movement Hamas took power in 2007, the Interior Ministry accused Israel of “focusing its attacks on civilian targets and residential buildings” and called on organizations that protect local and international human rights defend, to “put pressure”. [sur Israël] for him to stop [ses] crime [relevant] of international justice”.
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2,000 Israeli protesters
More than 2,000 Israeli demonstrators marched in Tel Aviv on Saturday evening. According to AFP journalists on the ground, many of them waved Palestinian flags or “stop the war” signs.
Demonstration against the war in Gaza in Tel Aviv, May 13, 2023. JACK GUEZ / AFP
According to the Israeli army, a Palestinian rocket fell on an Israeli agricultural area in Shokeda, less than ten kilometers from the Gaza Strip, in the afternoon, injuring a Palestinian worker whose death was later reported to the hospital. The death brings the number of Palestinians killed in clashes between Israel and Gaza since Tuesday to 34. On the Israeli side, an octogenarian was killed Thursday in Rehovot, central Israel.
AFP journalists noted new damage on Saturday caused by Israeli attacks on residential areas in Beit Lahya and Gaza in the north of the Strip or in Deir el-Balah in the centre.
In a statement, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called for “United Nations intervention to end Israeli crimes.”
Among the Palestinians killed are six military commanders of Islamic Jihad, militants of that movement and other members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), another armed group.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has confirmed the deaths of at least thirteen Palestinian civilians, including seven children. The Israeli army claims that four civilians, including three minors, were killed by Palestinian rockets that fell on the Gaza Strip.
The army says it has hit 371 “terrorist targets” and fired more than 1,230 rockets from Gaza into Israel since Tuesday, more than 370 of which were intercepted by the air defense system, which normally only fires when rockets threaten inhabited areas.
AFP journalists saw two busloads of foreigners employed by international organizations being evacuated from Gaza in the afternoon.
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