WarSclerotic

A leading consideration as top ministers deliberated Thursday how to respond to ongoing rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip was the need to focus on the northern border with Syria and the Iranian threat emanating from there, Channel 10 news reported Friday.

According to the TV report, ministers at the emergency security cabinet meeting were informed that the Hamas terror group had made several appeals for a ceasefire through mediator Egypt as well as via the UN.

Unnamed ministers present at the meeting told the broadcaster that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for an end to the latest round of fighting, rather than a widening of Israeli operations against Hamas and other Gaza terror groups.

Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, a top ally of Netanyahu, reportedly championed that same line, telling ministers a war in Gaza would not serve Israeli interests, as Jerusalem now needed to focus on the chief threat to national security — Iran’s attempts to entrench itself in Syria along the Israeli border.

Israel has repeatedly vowed to prevent Iran establishing a permanent presence in Syria and Lebanon and has carried out dozens of air strikes against Iran-backed forces and attempts to smuggle advanced weapons to Hezbollah.

Channel 10 reported that IDF officials at the meeting agreed that Israel could content itself with the actions it had taken so far and not widen the campaign, noting that Hamas had suffered serious damage through Israeli strikes on key sites.

Most ministers agreed with Netanyahu and Steinitz’s line of reasoning, the report said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) and Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz attend the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on August 16, 2015. (Marc Israel Sellem/POOL)

However, a key opponent was said to be Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who called for a tougher Israeli response, claiming stopping the military actions against Hamas targets now would harm Israeli deterrence. Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin was said to have sided with Liberman.

The security cabinet eventually elected to move to end the current round of violence, although an official statement issued after the forum adjourned said the army had been instructed to continue to act against terrorists in Gaza.

Some two hours later, Hamas announced that a ceasefire had been agreed upon. Israel later denied that it had signed onto any truce.

The Prime Minister’s Office and the Defense Ministry said Israel responded as long as Hamas was firing rockets, and halted its attacks when Hamas did the same.

The ministry and the PMO denied Channel 10’s account of the meeting, saying the military had been instructed to prepare for all eventualities. They refused to provide further details.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (c) speaks at a briefing with IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot (R) and Head of Northern Command Yoel Strick on August 7, 2018. (Ariel Hermoni/Defense Ministry)

The government came under criticism Friday for the alleged ceasefire from local community leaders near Gaza, who called the truce a “mistake” and said Israel must find a permanent solution to the recurrent rounds of violence, either through diplomacy or through military force.

Over Wednesday and Thursday, some 180 rockets and mortar shells were fired at southern Israel.

The projectiles injured at least seven people and caused damage to homes, businesses and infrastructure throughout the region, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

In response, the Israeli Air Force struck over 150 Hamas sites in the Strip, the army said. Palestinian officials said a pregnant woman and her infant daughter were killed in the Israeli strikes, along with one Hamas fighter, who was reportedly in a car used by a rocket-launching Hamas cell that was targeted by an IDF aircraft. The IDF said it only targeted military sites.

On Thursday evening, the Israeli Air Force flattened a five-story building in northern Gaza that served as a headquarters for Hamas’s internal security service, the army said.

A picture taken on August 9, 2018, shows people inspecting the rubble of a building targeted by the Israeli Air Force in response to a rocket attack that hit southern Israel earlier in the day on August 9, 2018. (AFP Photo/Mahmud Hams)

The IDF said the strike on the building in the northern Gaza Strip, which also served as a cultural center in the coastal enclave, was in response to “rocket fire by the Hamas terror group against the city of Beersheba earlier in the day.”

Hamas announced the ceasefire hours after the bombing of the building in Gaza. The border remained quiet until Friday’s weekly border protest.

On Friday evening, Israeli tanks shelled two Hamas observation posts in Gaza in response to riots on the border, during which a grenade, bombs and Molotov cocktails were hurled at soldiers, and attempts were made to breach the security fence. Hamas had called for mass attendance at the protests.

Around 9,000 people participated in the protests. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry reported that two Palestinians were killed in the riots. It said over 300 people were hurt, of whom dozens were shot by Israeli troops.

Hamas, an Islamist terror group that seeks to destroy Israel, seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Syria’s air defense systems were activated overnight Friday-Saturday against a “hostile target” that penetrated the Syrian airspace west of Damascus, the country’s official news agency reported.

The report did not state if a strike on the capital had actually taken place.

The incident came eight days after Syria said its air defenses destroyed an unspecified enemy target during an attempted airstrike west of Damascus, as residents reported a series of loud explosions around the Syrian capital.

The pro-government al-Masdar news service said August 2 that air defenses fired several missiles to fend off an attack near the el-Kisweh region and that it was not clear if the Syrian missiles were fired at an aircraft, drone or incoming rockets.

Israel has been blamed for previous attacks on a suspected Iranian military base in the el-Kisweh area. An attack in May killed at least nine Iranians.

In February of this year, the Syrian military shot down an Israeli F-16 fighter jet as it was taking part in a bombing raid against an Iranian-linked airfield in central Syria after an Iranian drone penetrated Israeli airspace, according to the IDF. The F-16’s pilot and navigator were injured as they bailed out of the aircraft, which crashed to ground in northern Israel.

Last month, Syrian government forces reached the frontier with the Israeli Golan Heights after capturing territory from rebels and Islamic State fighters.

It was the first time government forces had taken up positions along the frontier since an uprising against Assad swept through the country in 2011, becoming a seven-year civil war. Islamic State fighters later seized territory from rebels along the frontier region.

Syrian troops raise the Syrian flag in the border town of Quneitra in the Syrian Golan Heights on July 27, 2018. (AFP Photo/Youssef Karwashan)

Israel has sought to avoid direct involvement in the Syrian conflict but acknowledges carrying out dozens of airstrikes there to stop deliveries of advanced weaponry to its Lebanese enemy Hezbollah.

It has also pledged to prevent Iran from entrenching itself militarily in Syria, and a series of recent strikes that have killed Iranians in Syria have been attributed to Israel.

With Syrian forces now in close proximity, there have already been clashes between the two armies and Israel has insisted that the Syrian military respect the 1974 ceasefire agreement reached between Jerusalem and Damascus after the previous year’s Yom Kippur War. The agreement limits the forces each side can keep in the border region.

On July 24, a Syrian Sukhoi fighter jet entered Israeli airspace over the Golan Heights, traveling approximately two kilometers (one mile) before it was downed when the IDF fired two Patriot interceptor missiles.

View of the trail left in the sky by a Patriot missile that was fired to intercept a Syrian jet entering Israel from Syria, as seen in the northern Israeli city of Safed, on July 24, 2018. (David Cohen/Flash90)

On July 13, the system shot down a Syrian army drone that was flying over the demilitarized zone separating Israel from Syria. Two days earlier, a Syrian military unmanned aerial vehicle penetrated some 10 kilometers (six miles) into Israeli territory before it too was shot down by a Patriot missile. The IDF said it had allowed the drone to fly so deeply into Israeli territory as it was not immediately clear if it belonged to the Russian military.

On Tuesday, a senior official from a Middle East intelligence agency pointed the finger at Israel’s Mossad for the killing of a top Syrian chemical weapons and rocket scientist over the weekend, The New York Times reported, reinforcing accusations from Syria.

Aziz Azbar (via Facebook)

Aziz Azbar was killed when his car exploded in the northern city of Masyaf late last Saturday night. The unnamed official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the paper that Israel was behind the attack and said his own intelligence agency had been informed of the Israeli operation.

A senior Israeli government official declined to comment on the report Tuesday, but noted it was “a good thing” that Azbar was dead.

The Syrian regime has been accused of dozens of gas attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians during the war, even after it said it was giving up its stockpile.

Iran carried out a ballistic missile test last week for the first time in 2018, US officials were quoted saying late on Friday.

The test of the Iranian Fateh-110 short-range ballistic missile was carried out at the Strait of Hormuz during a naval exercise in which at least 50 small ships took part, Fox News reported. According to the report, the missiles flew “shore to shore” for more than 160 kilometers (100 miles) over the Strait of Hormuz to a site in the desert.

While the US military knew of Iran’s naval activity in the region, the missile test detected by US spy satellites had not been previously reported.

The missile launch test is the first known test of the Fateh-110 in over a year. Last time such a missile was launched by Iran was in March, 2017.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps announced last weekend it had completed a “successful” naval exercise in the Persian Gulf, which was seen in the West as a provocation in response to the US reimposition of sanctions on Tehran.

Illustrative: The Iranian warship Alborz, foreground, prepares to leave Iran’s waters at the Strait of Hormuz, in this photo released by the semi-official Fars News Agency, Tuesday, April 7, 2015. (AP/Fars News Agency, Mahdi Marizad)

The timing was unusual, as the exercise appeared to be similar in scale and nature to an annual drill that ordinarily takes places later in the year, in the autumn.

The vessels taking part in the exercise were mostly small attack boats, and there were no interactions reported with US ships in the strait, one of the world’s most important oil shipping lanes.

In a statement regarding the drill, Captain Bill Urban, the US military’s Central Command spokesman, said the US was “aware of an increase” in Iranian naval operations in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman.

“We are monitoring it closely, and will continue to work with our partners to ensure freedom of navigation and free flow of commerce in international waterways,” Urban said.

The Fateh-110 test launch came in the same week as US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to restore nuclear-related sanctions on Tehran, increasing economic pressure on the country. Trump withdrew from the landmark P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran in May, paving the way for sanctions to be reimposed.

Other signatories of the 2015 JCPOA opposed the America withdrawal from the landmark pact, and Russia and China criticized the reimposition of nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, arguing that Tehran had kept its part of the deal.

Iranian leaders have threatened several times in recent weeks to close the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the renewal of sanctions.

Illustrative: The guided-missile cruiser USS Cape St. George and the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln transit the Strait of Hormuz (CC-BY SA 3.0/Official US Navy Imagery)

US officials in recent years have accused both the regular Iranian navy and the IRGC of routinely harassing American warships in the Gulf.

But so far this year, there have been no such incidents.

The IRGC is a paramilitary force that answers directly to the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In January 2016, the Iranians briefly captured the crew of two small US patrol boats that strayed into Iranian waters.

Several thousand Palestinians were participating in weekly border protests along the Gaza fence Friday evening.

Some protesters were rioting near the fence, throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers and burning tires to create a smokescreen. Some flew incendiary kites into Israel. Israeli officials said at least six fires had broken out in Israeli territory since the morning due to airborne arson attacks.

The army said around 5,000 people had amassed at the border, and that it was responding to rioters in accordance with open-fire guidelines.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry reported that a Palestinian medic was killed by Israeli fire. It said 84 people were hurt, of which 25 were shot by Israeli troops.

Hamas had earlier said the so-called “March of Return” border demonstrations would continue unimpeded, despite a cessation of hostilities with Israel clinched the night before.

The announcement came after a 12-hour lull in fighting, following two days that saw the heaviest exchange of Palestinian rocket fire and reprisal Israeli airstrikes since the 2014 Gaza war.

Hamas said a ceasefire had been reached “on the basis of mutual calm” and went into effect at midnight. It said the deal was mediated by Egypt and other regional players. Israel denied there was a truce, but a senior Israeli official told Israel Radio that “quiet would be met with quiet.” There were no instances of violence reported along the border overnight.

For the past four months there have been near-weekly, violent protests along the Israel-Gaza border organized by Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

The terror group’s spokesman Hazem Qassim tweeted that demonstrators would continue to “break the siege” on the Gaza Strip.

“Every time the Israeli killing machine attempts to break our people’s will to continue its struggle and marches, it fails to do so,” he wrote. “Today our people will head to the ‘Marches of Return’ to challenge the Israeli war machine.”

“Our Palestinian people has a long-lasting, struggling soul,” the Hamas spokesperson wrote. “It will continue its resistance in all of its forms until it gains its freedom, independence and right to a dignified life.”

Over the past four months the “March of Return” protests have led to deadly clashes which saw Israeli security forces facing gunfire, grenades, Molotov cocktails, and efforts — sometimes successful — to damage or cross the border fence.

At least 160 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the weekly protests began, the Hamas ministry says. Hamas has acknowledged that dozens of those killed were its members.

One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper.

In addition to the border clashes, southern Israel has experienced hundreds of fires as a result of incendiary kites and balloons flown over the border from Gaza. Over 7,000 acres of land have been burned, causing millions of shekels in damages, according to Israeli officials.

Adam Rasgon contributed to this report.