WarSclerotic

Rocket fire from Gaza abated overnight Wednesday-Thursday with no alarms sounding in Israeli communities from 1 a.m. until after 9 a.m., when the tense calm was broken with multiple waves of attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border, including an anti-tank missile fired by Hamas operatives at an empty military bus north of the enclave.

A soldier standing nearby the bus was lightly injured by shrapnel in the attack, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The lull came as the IDF kept up airstrikes against the Hamas terror group, which has launched the majority of thousands of rockets fired at Israel since the fighting erupted 11 days ago. However, the number and intensity of the Israeli strikes were lower than in previous nights.

There have been intense international diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire, with reports indicating a truce could be reached as early as Friday as the current round of fighting appears to be drawing to a close.

In the Thursday morning attacks, multiple rounds of mortar and rocket fire were directed at Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip beginning just before 9:30 a.m., with a mortar attack on the communities of Nirm and Ein Hashlosha.

Over the next hour, more waves of mortar fire targeted additional communities around the Strip and rockets were fired toward the city of Ashkelon, one of the hardest hit areas in Israel in the current round of fighting.

No injuries were reported from the projectiles, but at least three people were lightly injured while running to bomb shelters, medics said.

Shortly after 10 a.m., the Hamas terror group announced that it had fired an anti-tank guided missile at an IDF bus near an army camp in Zikim, south of Ashkelon.

This was the second successful anti-tank guided missile attack directed against IDF soldiers on the border so far in this campaign. In the first such strike last Tuesday, IDF soldier Staff Sgt. Omer Tabib was killed when the missile struck his jeep and two other servicemen were injured, one seriously and one moderately.

From 7 p.m. Wednesday until 1 a.m. Thursday, some 80 rockets and mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel, with 10 of them falling short of the border and landing within the Palestinian enclave, the IDF said Thursday morning. According to the military, roughly 90 percent of the rockets heading toward populated areas were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system.

No direct injuries were reported in the late-night attacks, save for a man in his 50s who injured himself on a bomb shelter door and a 14-year-old girl who fell while running for cover. Both sustained minor injuries, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service, and were taken to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba for treatment.

Iron dome anti-missile system fires interception missiles as rockets fired from the Gaza Strip to Israel, in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, May 19, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

The IDF conducted a number of overnight strikes in the Gaza Strip, continuing its campaign against Hamas’s sprawling tunnel network throughout the enclave, the military said.

There has been increasing international pressure for the sides to agree, via mediators, on a ceasefire.

Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen said Thursday that Israel will continue what has been dubbed Operation Guardian of the Walls until its objectives are achieved.

“We can see that there is significant international pressure. We see that Hamas sources are begging for a ceasefire,” Cohen told the Kan public broadcaster. “We will finish the operation when we decide that we have obtained the objectives we want.”

Then Minister of Economy and Industry Eli Cohen attends a conference of the Manufacturers Association of Israel in Tel Aviv on December 2, 2019. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

Defense Minister Benny Gantz met Wednesday evening with senior security officials, including IDF commander Aviv Kohavi, and then approved another day of military operations in Gaza, the Walla news website reported.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas’s politburo, said Wednesday night that the group could reach a ceasefire within the next 24 to 48 hours to end the ongoing hostilities with Israel.

However, he warned any further Israeli airstrikes would draw additional rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

There have been various Israeli and international reports about ceasefire talks.

Following denials by officials on all sides, Channel 12 news reported Wednesday night that Israeli security officials believe a ceasefire could go into effect Friday afternoon. The report said that was the assessment shared during meetings of top Israeli defense brass on Wednesday.

At the same time, Israeli officials have told US officials that Washington’s pressure to reach a ceasefire quickly is only hindering the possibility of a truce, according to Channel 12.

The Wall Street Journal also reported late Wednesday that the ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza terror groups could come into effect as early as Friday.

People involved in the discussions told the outlet that Egyptian mediators have made progress in talks with leaders from the Hamas terror group, and Israel has “privately conceded” that it is close to achieving all its military objectives.

The report said Washington believes that barring any unforeseen events, the ceasefire could come into effect this week and the only question is one of timing.

However, a US official told the outlet that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad one of the terror groups in the Gaza Strip, remains an unknown quantity — the newspaper says the terror group is a “wild card” — and could continue to carry out attacks even after the ceasefire is agreed upon.

The White House declined to comment on the report.

Earlier Wednesday, US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call that he expects “a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire,” as Washington stepped up pressure on Jerusalem to end the fighting.

Yet, the IDF believes that Hamas is trying to score a “major success,” such as a cross-border attack or other major assault, which it can fete as a victory over Israel, a senior officer in the military’s Southern Command told reporters on Wednesday.

The senior officer said he believed the military’s intelligence capabilities would prevent the terror group from conducting a large invasion into Israel, but acknowledged that a smaller operation was possible.

The officer said Hamas may try to conduct a large-scale barrage on the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, having refrained from firing rockets at the city in recent days. According to IDF Military Intelligence, the terror group has at least enough long-range munitions to conduct several more barrages of dozens of rockets at Tel Aviv.

Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system intercepts rockets above the coastal city of Tel Aviv on May 15, 2021, following their launching from the Gaza Strip (Ahmad Gharabli / AFP)

Hamas and other Gaza terror groups have launched nearly 3,700 rockets at Israel since May 10, at times forcing people living near Gaza into bomb shelters around the clock.

Israel, in response, launched an extensive bombing campaign in the Strip. The humanitarian crisis has deepened in the impoverished Strip, with the UN saying 72,000 Palestinians have been displaced.

Twelve people in Israel, including a 5-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl, have been killed in rocket fire, and hundreds have been injured over the past ten days.

On Wednesday, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry updated the death toll in the Strip to 227, including more than 64 minors. It was not immediately clear if the ministry tally included all of those killed or if there were Hamas operatives not included in the count.

According to the IDF, more than 120 of those killed were members of Hamas and over 25 were members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad as of Monday night. The IDF says some of the Gaza civilian fatalities were killed by the terror groups’ own rockets falling short and exploding in Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces launched a massive bombardment on a large number of targets in the northern Gaza Strip shortly around midnight on Thursday, using both ground and air forces, the military said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to exact a “very heavy price” from Hamas, the Gaza-ruling terror group which has fired some 1,750 projectiles at Israel since Monday afternoon.

After initial confusion on the matter, the IDF clarified that it had not launched a ground invasion into the Gaza Strip during the attack, which reportedly lasted over an hour.

The IDF did not immediately identify its targets in the strike, saying it would do so shortly.

Following the Israeli assault, the Hamas terror group launched multiple waves of rocket attacks on southern and central Israel, firing rockets toward the cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba, Yavne and many surrounding communities.

At least one rocket directly struck a building in the city of Ashkelon, seriously injuring a 60-year-old man, Israeli authorities said. Another landed next to a car, damaging it.

Some of the incoming projectiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system and several landed in open areas, where they caused no damage or injuries.

“I said that we would exact a very heavy price from Hamas and the other terrorist organizations. We are doing so and we will continue to do so with great force,” he said. “The last word has not been said and this operation will continue as long as necessary in order to restore the quiet and security to the State of Israel.

According to the IDF, some 1,750 rockets and mortar shells have been fired toward Israel by terror groups in Gaza since fighting broke out on Monday evening, including 190 projectiles launched between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Thursday. Around 300 of the total projectiles launched landed inside the Palestinian enclave, and in at least one case killed a number of children when the rocket hit a school.

The IDF on Thursday said it had so far bombed upwards of 600 targets in the Strip, over 100 of them in the previous 24 hours.

Earlier in the evening, terrorists in the Strip also launched multiple barrages of rockets toward southern and central Israel, at Ben Gurion Airport and the Shfela region, as well as Tel Aviv. Another barrage targeted Ashdod and Ashkelon, with one rocket landing in the latter city.

A firefighter stands over the impact site of a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip that hit a building in the city of Ashkelon, injuring a man, on May 14, 2021. (Fire and Rescue Services)

Another round of rockets aimed at the southern city of Beersheva, with at least three projectiles hitting buildings.

The majority of the rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome air-defense system.

During one of the rocket barrages, an 87-year-old woman died after falling and hitting her head while running to a shelter in Shtulim, near Ashdod, Magen David Adom paramedics reported.

The increased death toll came after a number of reports in local Palestinian media of Israeli airstrikes targeting residential areas. Some of those reports claimed entire families were killed in some cases.

Israel maintains that most of those killed in Gaza were terror group members or, in a few cases, died from errant Palestinian rockets.

Earlier Thursday, Hamas operatives fired rockets at the Tel Aviv area and Beersheba and toward Eilat’s airport, in what the terror group said was an act of revenge for its commanders who were killed in Israeli strikes this week.

A few dozen rockets were fired in the attacks, which triggered sirens throughout central Israel and the northern Negev desert.

Earlier in the day, Israel closed Ben Gurion International Airport to incoming passenger flights, diverting them to Eilat’s Ramon Airport. Hamas said it subsequently targeted that airfield as well.

No sirens were heard in the rocket fire toward Eilat, as the projectile landed in an open area far outside the city, where it caused neither injury nor damage.

The military denied Hamas’s claims — widely echoed by Israeli media — that it fired some 100 rockets at central and southern Israel in the afternoon barrage. Rather, the Israel Defense Forces said, the terror group in fact launched 25 to 30 rockets in the attack.

Hamas also said it had launched a number of “suicide drones,” unmanned aerial vehicles carrying explosive payloads, into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. The military confirmed downing at least two such drones. Channel 12 news reported that the drones appeared to have primitive capabilities and did not seem to represent a serious danger.

On Wednesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service conducted a large-scale operation targeting a number of top commanders in Hamas, including the head of its Gaza City battalion and several people involved in its weapons production operations in the Strip, the military said.

Following the Thursday afternoon rocket fire, the IDF hit a number of sites in Gaza, including one the military said served as the main command center for Hamas’s surveillance network.

It was not immediately clear how many Hamas members were killed in the strike, which the IDF said occurred as dozens of people were in the building.

The IDF said it also launched strikes on four “operations apartments” of senior Hamas commanders in Gaza: the deputy commander of Hamas’s Jabalia regiment in the northern Strip, as well as three company commanders in northern and central Gaza.

Smoke and flames rise after an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip, May 12, 2021. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

All the apartments were allegedly used to direct recent rocket attacks at Israeli cities.

The military also said it bombed the “operational apartment” of Samer Abu Daka, the head of Hamas’s drone operations, after the drone launches.

The military said the apartment was used for military purposes. It also said the same apartment was targeted in the 2014 war.

The IDF also said it struck a main Hamas rocket production site and a military post of the Hamas naval force in the central Gaza Strip. In addition, a number of other weapons production sites were struck throughout the day, according to the military.

Also Thursday the IDF said it bombed four Hamas cells preparing to launch anti-tank guided missiles at targets in southern Israel over the course of two hours, striking the teams before they could carry out their attacks. The military said it bombed an anti-tank guided missile launcher that had been positioned on an apartment building in the southern Gaza Strip, accusing Hamas of using the occupants as human shields.

Hundreds of the projectiles fired from Gaza have been intercepted by Iron Dome missile defense batteries, according to the military, which refuses to give precise statistics on the matter as they could be used by terror groups to find ways to outmaneuver the system.

The IDF on Thursday said the air defense system had a roughly 90 percent interception rate of projectiles heading toward populated areas. Terror groups have been launching rockets in massive barrages to try and overwhelm the system.

In the most serious rocket attack overnight Wednesday-Thursday, two people were moderately injured by shrapnel and six others were treated for smoke inhalation after a Hamas rocket from Gaza struck in between homes in Petah Tikva shortly after midnight, sparking a fire. The buildings near the fire sustained moderate damage.

On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the Israeli military expanded its targets in the Gaza Strip to include institutions that Hamas uses to rule the Palestinian enclave, notably its treasury and banks, IDF Spokesperson Hidai Zilberman said.

In addition, the Israeli Air Force bombed Hamas’s internal security headquarters used in counterintelligence operations, destroyed the home of Iyad Tayeb, a battalion commander in Hamas’s military wing, and killed a squad of Hamas’s naval forces, Zilberman said.

Palestinians assess the damage caused by an Israeli airstrike at the Islamic National Bank of the Hamas terror group in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on May 13, 2021 (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

The IDF’s campaign in Gaza, officially dubbed Operation Guardian of the Walls, has so far been conducted primarily by airstrikes, as well as artillery shellings from the ground and the sea, but the military said it was preparing for the possibility of a ground incursion.

Zilberman said plans for a ground invasion would be presented for approval by the IDF General Staff on Thursday, at which point they would be given to Israel’s political leadership for consideration.

The IDF in recent days has deployed additional ground troops — from the Paratroopers Brigade, Golani Infantry Brigade and 7th Armored Brigade — to the Gaza border, sending with them tanks and armored personnel carriers, which could be seen being transported by trucks on highways throughout southern Israel.

On Thursday the army said it was canceling all weekend leave for combat soldiers as it prepared for the possibility of a ground operation. Zilberman said the military had called up 7,000 reservists. Roughly half of those were troops from air defense, artillery and medical units, and half serve in administrative and intelligence positions, Zilberman said.

In the evening, Defense Minister Benny Gantz gave the military approval to call up as many as 9,000 reservists if needed, his office said.

The reservists would come from combat units and command center operators, to serve in the Southern Command, Central Command, and Northern Command so that soldiers regularly stationed there could be sent on other missions, according to his office.

Hamas operatives fired large fusillades of rockets at the Tel Aviv area and Beersheba and toward Eilat’s airport on Thursday afternoon, in what the terror group said was an act of revenge for its commanders who were killed in Israeli strikes this week.

Dozens of rockets were fired in the attacks, which triggered sirens throughout central Israel and the northern Negev desert. A 60-year-old woman was lightly injured by shrapnel in the town of Kiryat Gat in southern Israel, along with a 7-year-old boy and 40-year-old woman who were injured while running to bomb shelters, medics said.

Earlier in the day, Israel closed Ben Gurion International Airport to incoming passenger flights, diverting them to Eilat’s Ramon Airport. Hamas said it subsequently targeted that airfield as well.

“By the order of the commander of the Qassam Staff Abu Khaled Muhammad al-Deif, rockets were launched towards Ramon Airport with the 250 Ayyash missile with a range of 250 kilometers,” Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, claimed in a statement, referring to an allegedly new Hamas rocket with a far greater range than ones previously known to be in the terror group’s arsenal.

No sirens were heard in the rocket fire toward Eilat, as the projectile landed in an open area far outside the city, where it caused neither injury nor damage.

Hamas also said it had launched a number of “suicide drones,” unmanned aerial vehicles carrying explosive payloads, into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. The military confirmed downing at least two such drones. Channel 12 news reported that the drones appeared to have primitive capabilities and did not seem to represent a serious danger.

Obeida said the attacks were “part of our response to the assassination of our heroic leaders and engineers,” adding that the rockets used were partially developed by those who were killed.

On Wednesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service conducted a large-scale operation targeting a number of top commanders in Hamas, including the head of its Gaza City battalion and several people involved in its weapons production operations in the Strip, the military said.

Israelis take cover in a shop in Bat Yam as a siren rings during a rocket attack from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on May 13, 2021 (Gil COHEN-MAGEN / AFP)

On Thursday afternoon Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan sent a letter to the Security Council calling on the top UN body to strongly condemn the ongoing rocket fire from Gaza and uphold Israel’s right to defend itself.

“The indiscriminate rocket fire constitutes a double war crime,” Erdan wrote. “It is clear that Hamas premeditated this escalation in violence and terrorism and is happy to pay the price of casualties on both sides in order to strengthen itself politically.”

Also Thursday the IDF said it bombed four Hamas cells preparing to launch anti-tank guided missiles at targets in southern Israel over the course of two hours, striking the teams before they could carry out their attacks. The military said it also bombed an anti-tank guided missile launcher that had been positioned on an apartment building in the southern Gaza Strip, accusing Hamas of using the occupants as human shields.

According to the IDF, over 1,500 rockets and mortar shells have been fired toward Israel by terror groups in the Gaza Strip since fighting broke out on Monday evening. Roughly a fifth of those landed inside the Palestinian enclave, and in at least one case killed a number of children when the rocket hit a school.

Hundreds of the incoming projectiles have been intercepted by Iron Dome missile defense batteries, according to the military, which refuses to give precise statistics on the matter as they could be used by terror groups to find ways to outmaneuver the system.

The IDF on Thursday said the air defense system had a roughly 90 percent interception rate of projectiles heading toward populated areas. Terror groups have been launching rockets in massive barrages to try and overwhelm the system.

In the most serious rocket attack overnight, two people were moderately injured by shrapnel and six others were treated for smoke inhalation after a Hamas rocket from Gaza struck in between homes in Petah Tikva shortly after midnight, sparking a fire. The buildings near the fire sustained moderate damage.

On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the Israeli military expanded its targets in the Gaza Strip to include institutions that Hamas uses to rule the Palestinian enclave, notably its treasury and banks, IDF Spokesperson Hidai Zilberman said.

In addition, the Israeli Air Force bombed Hamas’s internal security headquarters used in counterintelligence operations, destroyed the home of Iyad Tayeb, a battalion commander in Hamas’s military wing, and killed a squad of Hamas’s naval forces, Zilberman said.

Smoke and flames rise after an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip, May 12, 2021. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

In one case in the predawn hours of Thursday morning, the IDF destroyed a Hamas bunker that had been built under a school “and in proximity to other civilian buildings.”

According to Zilberman, the IDF has destroyed most of Hamas’s domestic rocket production capabilities, bombing a large number of weapons production and storage facilities. However, he said that the military will struggle to continue striking significant weapons caches, which are spread throughout the Strip. “If there were any warehouses with 100 rockets, they were destroyed in the first day of the operation,” Zilberman said.

The IDF on Thursday said it had so far bombed upwards of 600 targets in the Strip, over 100 of them in the previous 24 hours.

Palestinians assess the damage caused by an Israeli airstrike at the Islamic National Bank of the Hamas terror group in Khan Younis , in the southern Gaza Strip, on May 13, 2021 (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

The IDF’s campaign in Gaza, officially dubbed Operation Guardian of the Walls, has so far been conducted primarily by airstrikes, as well as artillery shellings from the ground and the sea, but the military said it was preparing for the possibility of a ground incursion.

Zilberman said plans for a ground invasion would be presented for approval by the IDF General Staff on Thursday, at which point they would be given to Israel’s political leadership for consideration.

The IDF in recent days has deployed additional ground troops — from the Paratroopers Brigade, Golani Infantry Brigade and 7th Armored Brigade — to the Gaza border, sending with them tanks and armored personnel carriers, which could be seen being transported by trucks on highways throughout southern Israel.

On Thursday the army said it was canceling all weekend leave for combat soldiers as it prepared for the possibility of a ground operation. Zilberman said the military had called up 7,000 reservists. Roughly half of those were troops from air defense, artillery and medical units, and half serve in administrative and intelligence positions, Zilberman said.

A total of seven people have been killed in Israel, including four people who died on Wednesday, among them a soldier killed by an anti-tank missile and a 5-year-old boy hit by shrapnel in Sderot.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said the death toll there rose to 72 Palestinians, including 16 children, Thursday. The IDF said dozens of those killed were members of terrorist groups, some of whom were actively preparing to launch attacks on Israel when they were hit.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad confirmed the deaths of seven of its members, while Hamas acknowledged that a top commander and several other members were killed. Israel and a Palestinian human rights group, Defense for Children, have said that several of the civilians were killed by Hamas rockets falling short inside Gaza, not by Israeli attacks, though Defense for Children does claim at least some of the children were killed by Israeli strikes.

The Israeli military also claims the number of terrorists killed so far is much higher than Hamas has acknowledged.

Violent confrontations erupted in Lod, Acre, Jerusalem, Haifa, Bat Yam, Tiberias and many other locations, with people injured, some of them seriously, leading Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce he was looking at deploying the military inside towns to restore order.

Perhaps the most shocking scene of the night, and one that elicited expressions of disbelief and horror from Israeli leaders, was footage of hundreds of Jewish extremists in Bat Yam vandalizing Arab property and then assaulting an Arab driver in his car, dragging him out of the vehicle and beating him savagely.

In Jerusalem, an Arab was stabbed by Jews and seriously injured at the Mahane Yehuda market.

“Death to Arabs” was heard in many locations of Jewish rallies.

Meanwhile, in Acre, a Jewish man was assaulted by Arab rioters and hit with rocks and iron bars, and was hospitalized in critical condition.

Despite two previous days of ever-expanding unrest, and a call-up of reinforcements for both police and Border Police, law enforcement once again seemed woefully unequipped to handle the scope of the chaos, and many scenes of violence went ahead with little police interference.

In Lod, which had been at the center of unrest for the two previous nights — with Arab mobs torching synagogues, stores and cars overnight Tuesday-Wednesday — a curfew had been declared between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. Yet gangs prowled the streets and vandalized unimpeded for hours, with police containing some events but failing to effectively control the crowds. There were reports that two people had been shot and lightly to moderately injured, though their identities weren’t immediately clear.

In Tamra, a Jewish man was stabbed and assaulted by an Arab mob, Channel 12 reported, with an Arab paramedic saying the attackers almost burned the man inside his car before he helped evacuate him to safety.

A truck burns at the entrance of the Jewish-Arab city of Lod, where a state of emergency has been declared following civil unrest, on May 12, 2021 (Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)

The key event of the night came when hundreds of extremist Jews, in a rally organized on social media hours prior and explicitly defined ahead of time as having violent intentions, marched along the Bat Yam promenade, smashing Arab property as they headed toward neighboring Jaffa, with police doing little to stop them.

At a certain point, the mob identified a driver on the road as Arab and began attacking his car.

Participants in the protest told Kan news that the man had deliberately tried to run them over, but footage and reports from the location indicated the driver panicked and attempted to drive away as he was accosted.

Video shared on social media showed the car approaching the crowd, then rapidly reversing away but colliding with a vehicle behind it. The car then sped into the crowd, apparently without hitting anyone, and attempted to pass a line of traffic in the way but crashed into another car before coming to a stop.

The driver was then pulled out and beaten by dozens of rioters before eventually being left alone. He was taken to Ichilov hospital, which said he was in serious but stable condition.

In an incident in Haifa, an Arab driver found himself in the midst of a mob chanting “Death to Arabs.” As he was pelted with stones, the driver turned the vehicle around to escape but hit one of the rioters, 26, causing him moderate injuries. The driver, 20, sped away but was later detained by police.

Disgusted condemnation from politicians

The well-documented incident in Bat Yam brought on expressions of disgust from politicians, from the prime minister to far-right Knesset members. In a video from his office, Netanyahu told the public that such incidents were “intolerable.”

“I don’t care if your blood is boiling. So it’s boiling. It’s irrelevant. You can’t take the law into your own hands,” he thundered. “You can’t come to an Arab civilian and try to lynch him, just as we can’t see Arab citizens do so to Jewish citizens. This will not stand.”

Opposition leader Yair Lapid decried the “total loss of control.”

Defense Minister Benny Gantz warned that Israeli internal divisions were “no less dangerous than Hamas.”

Yamina chief Naftali Bennett called the scenes in Bat Yam “un-Jewish, immoral, inhuman.” His No. 2 Ayelet Shaked decried the “moral bankruptcy” of such an attack.

New Hope’s Gideon Sa’ar warned the country could be sliding toward civil war.

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef put out a statement imploring Jews not to turn violent against Arab citizens.

“Innocent Israeli civilians are attacked by terror organizations, the blood runs hot and our hearts are outraged, the scenes are difficult to watch. But we mustn’t be dragged to provocations and to hurting people or harming property,” he said.

He added that the Torah does not permit one to take the law into one’s own hands. “The work of restoring order must be left to police,” he said. “We must be a light unto the nations, and not, God forbid, the opposite.”

Head of the Religious Zionism party Bezalel Smotrich gives a press statement in the Knesset, in Jerusalem, April 4, 2021. (Olivier FItoussi/Flash90)

The far-right leader of the Religious Zionism party, Bezalel Smotrich, long accused of stoking racial and religious tensions, said he was “shocked and ashamed to the bottom of my soul” by the attack on the Arab man. “We are in difficult days, under attack, frustrated… but damn it, how can Jews be so cruel?! Terrible,” he tweeted.

Netanyahu slams ‘anarchy’ of Arab rioters

Politicians also expressed a fair share of criticism toward Arab violence, with Netanyahu bemoaning the “anarchy” of Arabs rioters “setting synagogues alight, setting cars alight, assaulting police, attacking peaceful innocent civilians. We can’t accept it.”

He said he would give full backing and more powers and resources to police to enforce the law, and said he was also looking at sending military forces into cities to the extent that the law allows it. “If need be, we’ll legislate further [to do so],” he said.

Public Security Minister Amir Ohana said Arab attacks on Jews were unacceptable, as were Jewish attacks on Arabs. “Violence mixed with hatred should be condemned outright,” he said. “We have no other country. We must live here together.”

In an uncustomary phone interview with Channel 12, President Reuven Rivlin implored Israelis of all ethnicities and religions to stop the “madness” unfolding on the streets of Jewish-Arab cities.

President Reuven Rivlin meets with the Yesh Atid party at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, April 5, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“I am very worried,” he said, adding that he was “crying out” for internal peace.

“I call on and beg of all local leaders, religious leaders, on citizens, on parents. Do all you can to stop this terrible thing that is happening before our eyes,” he said. “We are dealing with a civil war between us without any reason. Please stop this madness… I beg of you. This country belongs to all of us. Desist.”

Joint List chair Ayman Odeh and Ra’am chief Mansour Abbas both condemned the violence on Arabic-language radio, while asking Arabs not to leave their homes so as not to be attacked by Jewish mobs.

The two Arab Israeli political leaders also stressed the need for Arab youth not to respond with violence against people or property.

Odeh also attacked Ohana, who he accused of giving support to Jewish rioters in “taking the law into their own hands” after he spoke in support of Jews suspected of shooting Arab rioters earlier this week, and said “civilians carrying weapons are helpful to authorities in immediately neutralizing threats or dangers.”

“The madness must be stopped,” Odeh said.

At TV studios, anchors and pundits were despondent, with many describing the night’s events as unlike anything they’d ever experienced, and as signifying a breakdown of social cohesion that could take years to mend.

Only around midnight did police state that they had managed to bring most hotspots under control, with at least some 400 people arrested, among them several who were suspected in the Bat Yam attack. Police said 36 cops were hurt during events.

Other incidents of note:

• In Tiberias, a mob of Jewish protesters assaulted an Arab driver who required treatment for light injuries. A police officer was also injured as he tried to protect a woman who was a passenger in the car. Four people were reportedly arrested in connection with the incident.
• An Arab man, 30, was seriously injured during violence near Or Yehuda, close to Tel Aviv, Hebrew media reported.
• Clashes broke out around Lod’s central mosque, which was apparently targeted by Jews who threw rocks at the building and confronted local Arabs, Kan news reported. Police moved to intervene and disperse the crowds that also attacked Arab homes in the city. Skirmishes also broke out between Arab residents and cops. A police patrol car was set on fire.

A police patrol car on fire in the city of Lod, May 12, 2021. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

Israel ordered a massive boost earlier Wednesday to police forces deployed in cities with Jewish and Arab populations. The move came hours after the state of emergency was declared in Lod.

The rare emergency declaration in the central Israeli city prompted the urgent dispatching of several Border Police companies to work to restore order.

Violence between the Jewish and Arab communities spiraled from confrontations in Jerusalem surrounding the month-long Muslim month of Ramadan and clashes on the Temple Mount, and came to a head as Israel engaged in an increasingly escalating clash with terrorist groups firing rockets into Israel from Gaza.