A week of escalating tensions between Israelis and Palestinians seemed to culminate Friday with a shooting in the occupied West Bank in which two Israeli sisters were killed and their mother was critically injured. The attack exacerbated fears about intensifying violence in the region, and deepened international concerns about whether deescalation is possible in the short term.
The shooting, which Israeli authorities are investigating as a terrorist attack, came just hours after Israeli airstrikes targeting the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Hamas has not claimed responsibility for the shooting.
Israel ordered the airstrikes in response to a bombardment of rockets fired from Lebanon on Thursday night — the largest since the countries went to war in 2006. Israel blamed Hamas for firing the rockets, but also has held the government of Lebanon, which is struggling with its own political and economic crises, responsible for failing to prevent the attack.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that it “will not allow the Hamas terrorist organization to operate from within Lebanon and holds the state of Lebanon responsible for every directed fire emanating from its territory.” Those rocket strikes themselves were in response to Israeli police twice raiding the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem earlier this week, as Palestinians prayed during Ramadan services.
For now, neither Israel nor Hamas has articulated a desire to escalate the conflict. Reuters reported Friday that “quiet will be answered with quiet at this stage” by the Israeli army, and that Hamas would do the same after having “made its point.”
But 2022 proved the deadliest year for Palestinians living in the West Bank since the United Nations started recording killings in 2005, and the conflict has continued to claim many lives this year. At least 90 Palestinians and 15 Israelis, almost all civilians, have been killed in 2023 so far,…
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