Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a late night meeting with his defense chiefs at the military headquarters in Tel Aviv, hours after Gaza terrorists fired two rockets the southern cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon.
Netanyahu was forced to seek shelter during a campaign event in Ashdod on Tuesday night as rocket sirens went off. Both were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
Netanyahu, who is also defense minister was meeting at midnight Tuesday with the IDF chiefs, along with the head of the Mossad and the Shin Bet Security agency.
Israeli analysts said it appeared that Gaza terrorist deliberately targeted the southern cities, knowing that Netanyahu and other politicians were holding rallies there. Netanyahu’s rally was being live-streamed on his Facebook page.
Most recent rocket fire from the Strip has targeted surrounding communities, only firing at large Israelis cities during major flare-ups or if trying to provoke a heavy Israeli response.
One woman, 46, in Ashdod was treated for anxiety after failing to reach shelter, medics said, but no other injuries or damage were reported.
The rocket fire came as Netanyahu was about to begin a speech to Likud supporters a week before Israelis head to the polls.
In an extraordinary scene captured on video, Netanyahu can be seen being whisked away from the stage by a gaggle of security guards as sirens sound.
In nearby Ashkelon, Blue and White MK Gabi Ashkenazi had to cut a campaign event short due to the rocket fire.
The city of Ashkelon opened its public bomb shelters after the sirens went off as a precautionary measure in case rocket attacks persisted.
On Sunday, a rocket was fired from Gaza at southern Israel, but landed inside the enclave, short of the border.
The attempted rocket attack came as an Egyptian military intelligence delegation visited Gaza on Sunday in a bid to calm heightened tensions between Israel and terror groups in the Strip.
Egypt has in the past helped broker unofficial ceasefires between Israel and Hamas.
Netanyahu warned Hamas on Saturday that Israel would respond forcefully to any attempt to harm its citizens and soldiers, following two days of violent incidents on and near the Gaza border.
The weekend saw a string of violent incidents along the Gaza border, after several weeks of relative calm.
On Friday night, incoming rockets set off sirens in Israeli communities along the Gaza border. The Israel Defense Forces said it had identified five projectiles that had crossed the border into Israeli territory. Israeli artillery and aircraft attacked several military targets belonging to the Hamas terror group in the northern Gaza Strip in retaliation, the IDF said.
The exchange of fire came hours after two Palestinian teens were reportedly killed in clashes with Israeli troops along the border, in what the IDF called “especially violent” riots.
The deadly clashes came just days after Israel lifted restrictions on fuel deliveries to Gaza, a week after curbing them by half due to rocket and mortar fire from the coastal enclave.
Since the outbreak of protests on the Gaza border last year, Israel has intermittently taken a number of steps to stem outbreaks of violence from the coastal territory, such as closing border crossings, cutting fuel shipments, and reducing the permitted fishing area off the coast of the Strip. It has rolled back such moves following decreases in violence.
A deal was brokered several months ago by UN and Egyptian officials to end several violent flare-ups in recent months between Israel and Hamas, which have fought three devastating wars since 2008, and to help stabilize the territory and prevent a humanitarian collapse.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Tuesday that the Israel Defense Forces showed weakness in the incident earlier this month in which it staged an evacuation of “wounded soldiers” from an APC that his group targeted with anti-tank missiles, and that Hezbollah had learned lessons from the incident.
“The legendary and invincible [IDF] has turned into a Hollywood army, acting in movies, because it has become weak, debilitated, feeble and cowardly,” Nasrallah said.
He said Hezbollah’s takeaway from the staged evacuation was that it should hit more Israeli targets in the future.
“You are saying to us: ‘Next time, don’t strike one military vehicle and don’t strike only in one place. Instead, hit more than one military vehicle and hit more than one place.’ We are not going to see anymore Hollywood films,” he said.
Hezbollah gleefully announced it had killed and wounded soldiers after firing the anti-tank missiles into northern Israel earlier this month, but Israel later said no soldiers were injured and Israeli sources indicated that footage of wounded soldiers being rushed to a hospital was part of a ruse.
The IDF retaliated by firing approximately 100 artillery shells and bombs at Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. No Lebanese casualties were reported. Hezbollah, apparently believing it had already exacted sufficient revenge for DIF strikes the previous week, refrained from any further response. The group has continued to assert that the APC suffered a direct hit.
“We reject any war project against the Islamic Republic of Iran because such a war will set the region on fire, destroy countries and peoples and target the whole axis of resistance,” he said. “Those who think that such a war will be the end of axis of resistance, I tell them: With this axis’s force, perseverance, truth, sincerity, determination and sacrifices, such a war will be the end of Israel and the American hegemony and presence in our region.”
Tensions with Hezbollah and its patron Iran have soared in recent weeks, after the IDF late last month thwarted an attempt by Iranian operatives in Syria — including two former Hezbollah members — to carry out an attack on northern Israel with armed drones and attacked their base. It also followed a drone attack in Beirut, attributed to Israel, that reportedly destroyed key components of a joint Hezbollah-Iran project to manufacture precision-guided missiles in Lebanon.
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