The announcement, which followed shortly after one by Islamic Jihad, came about 50 hours after the escalation began, when Israel had launched pre-emptive strikes against Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza. At least 44 civilians and fighters were killed in the escalation, according to Palestinian officials, and among them were 15 children. Terms of the deal were not immediately released. But Egypt’s official state news agency reported that in the push for a truce, Cairo was working to see the release of an Islamic Jihad fighter captured by Israel six days ago, as well as ensuring that a Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike in an Israeli prison will be transferred to a hospital for medical treatment. Previous ceasefire agreements have reportedly led Israel to make commitments to ease the closure of Gaza.
Rockets were fired at Jerusalem
Earlier Sunday, Palestinian militants fired rockets toward Jerusalem after overnight Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed a senior militant commander — the second since the start of Israel’s operation against Islamic Jihad. Khaled Mansour, the head of Islamic Jihad operations in southern Gaza, was killed in an airstrike on a building in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, Israeli officials said. Israel said Mansour was responsible for a series of terrorist attacks against Israelis. He was the second Islamic Jihad commander to be killed in the Israeli operation, which he called “Breaking Dawn”. In one of Israel’s opening campaigns on Friday afternoon, an airstrike killed Tayseer Al-Jabari, the militant group’s chief of operations in northern Gaza. The Israeli military continued to hit dozens of additional targets in Gaza, including rocket launch sites, weapons manufacturing facilities and a tunnel it said was being built to allow militants to infiltrate Israel and carry out attacks. The Israeli military also expanded its campaign in the West Bank, arresting around 40 suspected Islamic Jihad fighters across the territory in two nights of operations. Islamic Jihad, which is the smaller of the two main militant groups in Gaza, has fired more than 900 rockets and mortars, according to Israeli officials, mostly at Israeli communities near Gaza, but has also fired several longer-range rockets. About 20 percent of the rockets have landed inside Gaza, an army spokesman told reporters. The Iron Dome air defense system, which is deployed against any incoming fire deemed to be a threat to people or buildings, and which intercepted rockets fired at Jerusalem, was operating with a 97 percent success rate, the spokesman said on Sunday.
Children among the dead
Forty-four Palestinians, including 15 children, were killed in the violence, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Israel has maintained that most of those killed in its airstrikes were militants, while Islamic Jihad has refused to release the names of its fighters killed, saying it would only do so once the escalation is over. There have also been conflicting claims of responsibility for some of the deaths. In one incident on Saturday, four children were among seven people killed in an explosion in Jambaliya in northern Gaza. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike, but Israel rejected the claim, blaming an errant rocket launch. The Israel Defense Forces released a video showing the Islamic Jihad rocket apparently suddenly losing power and falling to the ground over a residential area. The presidency of the Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank and has very limited influence over events in Gaza, strongly condemned Israel’s military operation and called for a strong response when the UN Security Council holds a special meeting later to discuss the escalation. Among the UN’s most pressing humanitarian priorities is restoring fuel supplies to Gaza, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told CNN. Stocks are so low that Gaza’s only power plant has been shut down since midday Saturday, causing drastic cuts in electricity supplies across the territory. Two water treatment plants and nine pumping stations have been forced to close as a result of power shortages, OCHA said, meaning 130,000 cubic meters of dirty water is now flowing directly into the Mediterranean Sea. The impact is also being felt by Gazan households, which now receive an average of three to four hours of electricity a day, up from 16 hours, according to the Gaza Power Company to CNN. Fuel for the power plant is imported into Gaza by truck through the Kerem Shalom crossing, which was closed by Israel six days ago amid concerns that Islamic Jihad was threatening an attack following an Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin, where Israeli forces arrested one of the group’s senior commanders, Bassam al-Saadi, on Monday night. The escalation was the most serious in nearly 15 months, when the Israeli military and Hamas fought an 11-day war in May 2021. A key difference this time was Hamas’ decision to stay out of the fighting. Her remarks blamed Israel for the escalation, but have consistently stopped short of threatening retaliatory attacks.
Leader of Islamic Jihad meets Iranian President
The two-day clash occurred while the Islamic Jihad leader was in Iran, meeting with Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi and other high-ranking officials. A video obtained by Reuters shows Ziyad al-Nakhalah talking to Raisi on Saturday in Tehran, a day after Israel launched its military operation against Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Al-Nakhalah also spoke on Saturday with the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Lt. Gen. Hossein Salami, who praised the “quick response of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance” to the Israeli military operation, saying it “proves that a new era has begun for the resistance to take power,” according to a report by Iran’s Fars news agency. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid drew attention to Al-Nakhalah’s visit to Iran when he spoke on Friday about the Gaza campaign. “Our fight is not with the people of Gaza. Islamic Jihad is an Iranian proxy that wants to destroy the state of Israel and kill innocent Israelis. The head of Islamic Jihad is in Tehran as we speak. We will do whatever whatever it takes to defend our people,” Lapid said. CNN’s Abeer Salman and Andrew Carey reported from Jerusalem and Ibrahim Dahman from Gaza. CNN’s Hadas Gold and Elliott Gotkine in Ashdod contributed to this report.
