WarSclerotic

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Trump administration is deploying air and sea strike forces to the Middle East in response to what it described as “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran.

“In response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings, the United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the U.S. Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force,” National Security Adviser John Bolton said Sunday evening in a statement.

“The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces,” Bolton said.

It’s not clear what Iranian escalations Bolton is referring to. Israel blames a deadly escalation over the weekend on the Gaza Strip border in part on Iranian arming and funding of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

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BREAKING: Statement from the National Security Advisor John Bolton:

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The Trump administration is also backing Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and the Saudis say the Houthi forces they are engaging in that country are a proxy for Iran. The Syrian civil war is in its final stages and parties to that conflict, including Iran and its ally, the Lebanese Hezbollah terror group, are seeking to establish permanence in that country. The United States also wants to diminish Iranian influence in Iraq.

Carrier strike groups project power through combat ships and aircraft.

Hundreds gathered in Jerusalem late Sunday night to bury Pinchas Menachem Prezuazman, who was killed earlier in the day after being struck by rocket shrapnel while running for cover in the coastal city of Ashdod.

Prezuazman, 21, was a dual American and Israeli citizen, according to Consul General of Israel in New York Dani Dayan.

“I don’t understand why this is happening, but I am sure that you have fulfilled your purpose on this earth,” his father Haim Dov Prezuazman said as he was laid to rest.

“I had a great blessing to raise you for 21, nearly 22 years,” he said.

Prezuazman leaves behind a wife and a small child.

The rocket that killed Prezuazman was part of an early evening fusillade of dozens of rockets aimed at the southern Israeli cities of Sderot, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Yavneh, Gedera, and Beersheba, which have a combined population of over 600,000 residents.

Ultra Orthoodx Jews stand outside the funeral of Pinchas Menahem Prezuazman in Jerusalem on May 5, 2019. Prezuazman was killed by shrapnel from a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in Ashdod earlier Sunday . Hadas Parush/Flash90)

He was the fourth Israeli killed in the latest round of fighting.

Earlier Sunday an Israeli man killed  in a rocket attack on the southern city of Ashkelon was identified as Ziad al-Hamamda, 47, and a second victim killed earlier in the day when an anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip struck his car was named as 68-year-old Moshe Feder.

Fifty-eight year-old father of four Moshe Agadi was the first fatality after being rushed to Barzilai Medical Center with shrapnel wounds he sustained when the rocket hit his home in the city at around 2:30 a.m. Sunday.

At least 10 others were injured by shrapnel from rockets, missiles and mortar shells from the Gaza Strip, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.

The latest round of violence has seen over 650 rockets fired at Israel over the weekend by Gaza terror groups and the Israel Defense Forces responding with strikes against some 300 targets throughout the Palestinian coastal enclave.

Israel has responded to over 650 rockets, missiles, and mortar shells fired into its territory since Saturday with over 300 airstrikes on Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terror group targets in Gaza.

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump said Sunday that the United States supports Israel “100%” as it protects its people from an onslaught of rockets fire from Gaza.

“Once again, Israel faces a barrage of deadly rocket attacks by terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” Trump tweeted Sunday evening in his first remarks since the surge in violence over the weekend. “We support Israel 100% in its defense of its citizens.”

In the worst outbreak from the coastal enclave since the 51-day 2014 war, Gaza militants have fired more than 600 rockets into Israel since Friday, killing four Israelis, including a 21-year-old Israeli-American, and sending much of the country into bomb shelters.

Trump also had a message to the Palestinians.

“To the Gazan people — these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery,” the president said. “END the violence and work towards peace – it can happen!”

The eruption in violence comes as the Trump administration is preparing to unveil its long-awaited peace plan, which officials have said will come as early as June, after the Ramadan holiday, which starts Monday in many places.

Trump’s full backing for Israel is unlikely to impact the Palestinian reaction to the plan, as they have already rejected it, citing previous pro-Israel moves by the Trump administration.

The latest violence began on Friday after a Palestinian sniper wounded two Israeli soldiers, and Gaza terrorists fired rockets and mortars toward Israeli cities and towns.

Israel responded with airstrikes against  Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza. Hamas officials said that 22 Palestinians died in the offensive, including a pregnant woman and two young children. The IDF said the pregnant woman was killed by a failed rocket launch from withing the Strip. At least 11 of the Palestinian dead were terrorists.

A car bursts into flames after it was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod on May 5, 2019. (Flash90)

A White House official declined to comment on Sunday when asked how the latest flareup would affect the rollout of the proposal.

Vice President Mike Pence condemned Hamas attacks and said that Israel had a right to protect itself militarily. “We strongly condemn the attacks in Gaza by Hamas terrorists,” he tweeted. “Israel has the absolute right to defend itself & the U.S. stands by our great ally Israel.”

Not everyone in Washington, however, was so unequivocally supportive of Israel.

Freshmen Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota, suggested that the root cause of the fighting was Israel’s “occupation” of Gaza and the impoverished conditions there.

“How many more protesters must be shot, rockets must be fired, and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends? The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unsustainable,” she tweeted. “Only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace.”

Under former prime minister Ariel Sharon, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, forcibly evicting 7,000-8,000 settlers and pulling out all its military forces.

After Hamas overtook control over Gaza from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction in a bloody coup in 20007, Israel installed a naval blockage and siege of the strip to prevent weaponry from being smuggled in and block Hamas militants from exacting terror attacks in Israel.

Omar has, in the past, been intensely critical of Israel. She tweeted during the last Israel-Hamas war of 2014 that Israel had “hypnotized the world.”

Friends and relatives mourn as they attend the funeral of 58-year-old Moshe Agadi, who was killed from shrapnel wounds after his house was hit directly by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, southern Israel, on May 5, 2019. (Noam Rivkin Fenton/Flash90)

Earlier this year, she accused the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of paying public officials to support Israel and said pro-Israel activists were pressuring her to forge an “allegiance” toward Israel, which critics said amounted to her levying the charge of dual loyalty.

The Democratic Majority for Israel, a recently established pro-Israel advocacy group aligned with the Democratic Party, castigated Hamas for firing “deadly and unprovoked rocket attacks on Israeli civilians” and urged all of the party’s presidential hopefuls to publicly express support for Israel  in this conflict.

“This is the time for political leaders in both parties to express solidarity with Israel,” the organization’s CEO Mark Mellman. “We urge all of the Democratic presidential candidates to condemn these terror attacks and reaffirm their support of Israel’s right to defend itself.”

As of this writing, none of them have commented.

Israel and the Gaza terror groups have reached a ceasefire to end two days of intense fighting that saw more than 600 rockets fired into Israel and 4 civilians killed, which went into effect at 04:30 AM, Arabic-language media reported early Monday, citing sources in Hamas and Islamic Jihad. There was no confirmation or comment from Israel.

The reports come after several hours of quiet and after a previous report of a truce appeared premature, ruptured by rocket fire and airstrikes.

Late Sunday, Hebrew and Arabic media reported that mediators from Egypt and the European Union were on the verge of successfully brokering a ceasefire between Israel and terror groups in the coastal enclave.

The reports cited a Western diplomat, who said the nascent agreement would go into effect around midnight on Monday. UN Middle East Envoy Nikolay Mladenov was said to be mediating the talks along with Egyptian intelligence officials.

But as midnight came, the IDF continued to strike targets in Gaza and rocket sirens were heard across southern Israel. A salvo of rockets fired at the Ashkelon area was intercepted by the Iron Dome system. There were no reports of injuries.

Israeli emergency personnel evacuate a wounded woman from the site of rocket attack in the southern Israeli town of Ashdod on May 5, 2019.(Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)

There were no further rockets or airstrikes after 02:00 AM, perhaps indicating progress in the ceasefire talks.

The Arabic media reports said the original ceasefire had floundered over an Israeli refusal to allow in Qatari cash. Hamas was adamant it wanted the money ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that starts Monday in the Palestinian territories and much of the Muslim World.

For it’s part, Israel did not comment reports of the deal, but it has refrained from doing so in the past, even denying reported ceasefires, which went on to hold for days, weeks and or months at a time.

Despite reports on a truce, local authorities announced Monday schools would remain closed within a 40 kilometer (25 miles) radius from Gaza.

Rockets are launched from Gaza Strip to Israel, Sunday, May 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Shortly after midnight, the Gaza terror groups said the fighting would continue until Israel gives in to their demands and acknowledges the understandings reached.

“The battle will not end until the occupation responds affirmatively to our people’s demands,” the Joint Command Center of Armed Palestinian factions in Gaza said in a statement early Monday.

“We will not allow the settlers to leave their shelters as long as the enemy’s leadership denies its understandings with the resistance,” it said.

Earlier Sunday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that restoring calm in and around the Gaza Strip would be possible if Israel agreed to stop all retaliatory strikes in the Palestinian enclave.

Smoke billows from a targeted neighborhood in Gaza City during an Israeli airstrike on the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave on May 5, 2019. (MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)

A senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad official said the group would also be willing to hold its fire if Israel agreed to its “obligations” — an apparent reference to pledges from Jerusalem last month to ease restrictions around the Gaza Strip and allow $30 million dollars in Qatari aid into the coastal enclave.

On Sunday night, the Israeli military said it bombed some 40 “terror targets” in the Gaza Strip in its latest round of airstrikes, bringing the IDF’s total number of raids up to 320 in the past two days. The military said it targeted “observation headquarters, underground bunkers, weapons caches, military facilities, launchpads, observation posts and more” in its most recent air raids.

The army said it targeted sites connected to both the Hamas terror group, which rules Gaza, and the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Palestinian medical officials reported 29 dead since Friday, including at least 11 terrorists, The Times of Israel confirmed.

The high-level security cabinet huddled for five hours on Sunday over the violence that killed four Israeli civilians in a single day, the deadliest casualty rate for Israel since the 2014 Gaza war.

Following the meeting, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a brief statement saying that the army has been instructed “to continue the strikes and prepare for them to continue.”

Palestinians carry an injured boy outside a hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza strip on May 5, 2019. (ANAS BABA / AFP)

The statement added that the government’s “main consideration is the security of the state and its citizens.” This appeared to refer to claims that Israel might cave to the demands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in order to prevent the fight from continuing into Israel’s Memorial and Independence Days later this week and the international Eurovision Song Contest planned for May 14-18 in Tel Aviv.

As of Sunday evening, four people in Israel were killed and at least 10 injured by shrapnel from rockets, missiles and mortar shells from the Gaza Strip, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.

Fifty-eight year-old father of four Moshe Agadi was the first fatality after being rushed to Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center with shrapnel wounds he sustained when the rocket hit his home in the city at around 2:30 a.m. Sunday.

In a barrage aimed at the same southern city later in the day, a rocket directly hit a factory, killing a Zaid al-Hamamdeh, a 47-year-old father of seven, and injuring two others.

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אחד ההרוגים היום במועצה המקומית משגב שלום בדרום הוא זאיד אלחמאמדה@pozailov1

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A short while later, a third man, Moshe Feder, 60, was fatally wounded when an anti-tank guided missile slammed into his car as he was driving along the Route 34 highway near the community of Kibbutz Erez, just north of the Gaza border. He sustained a serious shrapnel wound to the leg, causing significant blood loss. Feder was pronounced dead at Barzilai’s Medical Center after CPR efforts failed. The Hamas terror group claimed responsibility for the attack.

On Sunday evening, a fourth man was killed after being struck by rocket shrapnel while running for cover in the southern city of Ashdod, medics said. Pinchas Menachem Prezuazman, 21, was survived by his wife and son. He was laid to rest in Jerusalem.