After 12 days of fighting between Israel and the Hamas in Gaza, after more than 4400 rockets fired at Israel, as of last night at 2 am, there is a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas in Gaza.
There is no agreement signed yet, but with the pressure of the US and the EU and with the efforts of the Egyptians, both sides stopped shooting.
From past experience, this is still a dangerous time since Hamas in the past resumed shooting even with a ceasefire, so we are still on alert, but finally people here are starting to see the end of this.
Last 24 hours of Day 12 to the fighting.
Few updates about what went on during day 12 of this conflict and some opinions:
No rockets since 2 a.m. ceasefire, over 100 km of Hamas tunnels destroyed
As the truce between Israel and Hamas came into effect after 11 days of deadly fighting, the IDF had dozens of planes and unmanned aerial vehicles in the sky over Gaza “ready to attack” should rockets be fired, said IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Hidai Zilberman.
“We wanted to ensure that there would be no significant barrage by Hamas,” he said, adding that “we conveyed the message that if there is a significant barrage, we will attack.”
Over the close to two weeks of fighting, the IDF destroyed over 100 km of Hamas’s tunnel network during multiple strikes in Gaza City, Khan Yunis and Rimal. The IDF also focused on destroying the groups’ rocket launching abilities, with some 570 airstrikes targeting rockets and their launchers. Of that, 340 strikes targeted rocket launching infrastructure such as launch pits and 230 ground-to-ground rockets and 70 multi-barrel rocket launchers. Another 35 strikes target mortars.
From an article in the Jerusalem Post
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Hamas dealt heavy blow, ‘surprised’ by Israeli response, analysts say
Hamas has been dealt a heavy blow after severely miscalculating the Israeli response to its rocket attacks, analysts believe.
Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad have so far lobbed nearly 4,000 rockets from Gaza into Israeli territory in less than two weeks. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system has successfully managed to intercept the majority of these in midair.
From an article in the Jerusalem Post
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The AP tower: How the IDF messed up explaining why it attacked in Gaza
The phone rang at 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, and Jawad Mahdi answered. The person on the line, speaking fluent Arabic, told Mahdi that he had one hour to evacuate a building he owns in Gaza City. An Israeli airstrike was coming.
A well-known Gaza businessman who until a few years ago had a permit to enter Israel, Mahdi immediately went to the al-Jalaa building, a 12-story tower just two kilometers from the beach. Built in the 1990s, al-Jalaa was a residential and commercial building and one of the strip’s most recognized structures. Mahdi lived there in nine apartments with his immediate and extended family, he told The Jerusalem Post in a phone call from Gaza this week.
The Israeli on the phone asked Mahdi if he was the owner of al-Jalaa. Mahdi said yes.
“I am from the Shabak [Israel Security Agency],” said the man on the phone, according to Mahdi. “ Hamas is in your building. We are going to destroy it. Get everyone out. You have one hour.”
From an article in the Jerusalem Post
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‘We are in a war zone,’ says head of Israeli hospital targeted by rockets
Ashkelon has become a war zone, the director of the local Barzilai Medical Center Prof. Yaniv Sherer said on Thursday, just hours before a rocket fell on the hospital grounds, meters from the emergency room but did not cause significant damage.
“This is actually a war zone,” Sherer said. “If a terrorist organization shoots thousands of missiles against a civilian population and we have casualties, including a six-year-old who was hit alongside his family and died, I can’t call it any other way.”
From an article in the Jerusalem Post
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As Israel fights against Hamas, Evangelicals stand with the Jewish State
Waaaaaahhhhhhh. Waaaaaahhhhhhh. Waaaaaahhhhhhh. The sound of the warning siren signaling that a Hamas rocket is approaching Ashkelon has sounded hundreds of times in the last 10 days.
“When the first missiles were fired … we ran to the shelter and I fell,” recalled Meirav, a mother of three from the city. “Thirty seconds is too little time, and we didn’t manage to get to the shelter. These were moments of horror. I was really scared, especially for my children.”
Nights are the most frightening.
Meirav’s story is similar to thousands of others who live in southern Israel. But it could be worse. If there had been no shelter to go to, Meirav would have been left in extreme danger at home.
Since 2002, the International Fellowship of Christian and Jews has renovated or built more than 2,800 bomb shelters across Israel, investing around $47 million (forty seven million dollars).
From an article in the Jerusalem Post
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Read the view of this Palestinian (Bassem Eid, Palestinian writer and human rights activist) about who is to be blamed for this conflict
With my background in Palestinian campaigning and as a resident of East Jerusalem today, you might assume that I am against Israel’s current military actions. But this could not be further from the truth. The blame for this month’s bloodshed lies solely at the feet of Hamas
Hamas saw Sheikh Jarrah as an opportunity to show Palestinians in Jerusalem and elsewhere that they could ‘do something’ while Fatah could not
They see a lopsided body count as a positive development, as it allows them to claim that Israel is the aggressive party in the conflict they started..
Read more of this article here
Finally, watch this very good comprehensive explanation about the roots of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians
Is the conflict all about what happened in Sheih Jarah or in the Al Aqsa musk in Jerusalem? Or is it about the right of Israel to exist here in the Middle East?
Watch this YouTube video that gives you the roots of the conflict here
For 12 days (and much more) we prayed for peace over this whole region as soon as possible, we don't have peace yet and it will probably take a very long time before we can live here in peace, but this ceasefire is a good start.
We hope that thigs will calm down fast, we are almost fully over the Covid-19 situation, and we hope that tourism will resume and we will get back to normal life in this Beautiful Israel of ours
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