The ground shook overnight as the Israeli military carried out at least 150 powerful airstrikes against the Gaza Strip. Israeli tanks fired into Gaza too, but didn’t enter.
Thousands of Israeli troops have been deployed around the edges of Gaza for a possible invasion. Israel is trying to stop this.
Gaza is run by Islamic hardliners from Hamas who have fired nearly 2,000 rockets at Israel this week while millions have been rushing to shelters including America Maya Danon. She said, “So when you hear the siren, you get up immediately. Usually, it’s been in the middle of the night lately. So we get out of bed. We go down to the bomb shelter.”
This is what sparked this latest round of an old and still very bitter conflict: on Monday, as Palestinians were praying in Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque during the final days of Ramadan, Israeli troops moved in to disperse them, with force.
Israel says it was responding to rock-throwing. Palestinians say it was part of a pattern of intensified harassment in the disputed holy city. But this escalation has something new that has Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scared.
Palestinian-Israeli citizens, 20% of the population, have started to express their anger too, some even siding with Hamas.
Vigilante violence has broken out, Jews ambushing Arabs, Arabs beating Jews. In mixed towns now, Israelis are keeping watch for fellow citizens and this has the potential to be more dangerous to Israel than even rockets fired from afar.
While Israeli and Palestinian civilians are both dying in this conflict, far more Palestinians are being killed because, unlike the people in Tel Aviv, they don’t have the advantage of a missile defense system or shelters.
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