OCCUPIED AL-QUDS — The occupying regime of Israel unleashed rare airstrikes on Lebanon and continued bombarding the Gaza Strip on Friday, an escalation that sparked fears of a broader conflict following days of Israeli violence over the most sensitive holy site in Al-Quds.
Midday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Al-Quds passed peacefully. But a Palestinian shooting attack in the Israeli-occupied West Bank killed two Zionists near an Israeli settlement just hours later in retaliation of the latest Israeli atrocities.
The early morning Israeli strikes followed an unusually large rocket barrage fired at Zionist targets from southern Lebanon — what analysts described as the most serious incident since the Zionist regime’s 2006 war with Lebanon.
The escalation came after Israeli forces raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Al-Quds earlier this week, sparking unrest in the contested capital and outrage across the Arab world.
The Israeli strikes seemed designed to avoid drawing in Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which the occupying regime considers its most powerful enemy.
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah met with Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh, Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau, and top officials Khalil al-Hayya and Osama Hamdan.
Israeli minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant said earlier following a security meeting that the regime was ready on all fronts to wage a new war.
Nasrallah issued a warning on Thursday. “The resistance front has a high number of long-range missiles in its arsenal; but it is not using them at the moment,” he said.
“One of the options that resistance fighters would take in case Zionists commit a folly would be the launch of a significant number of ballistic missiles at sensitive Israeli centers.”
Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, said the attack on Al-Aqsa was a “red line” for all Palestinians.
Iraq’s anti-terror group Kata’ib Hezbollah and Yemeni Ansarullah resistance group also expressed solidarity with the Palestinians.
“We express our full support for rocket barrages fired from southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip at areas inside the Israeli-occupied territories in retaliation for the latest attack by Israel on the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of al-Quds,” Kata’ib Hezbollah said in a statement.
Kata’ib Hezbollah called upon all Muslims to stand up against the Israeli incursions and defend Al-Aqsa Mosque through all available means.
Ansarullah movement said it will extend all forms of support to Palestinian resistance groups and Hezbollah in case of a military confrontation with the Zionist regime.
A flock of sheep was also killed when the Israeli missiles struck an open field near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh. Other airstrikes hit a bridge and power transformer in the nearby town of Maaliya and damaged an irrigation system providing water to orchards in the area.
In the Gaza Strip, the Zionist regime’s military pounded what it said were weapons production sites and underground tunnels belonging to Hamas, the resistance group ruling the Palestinian enclave. Residents inspected the damage left after Israeli strikes — including to a children’s hospital in Gaza City, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
After the retaliatory strikes, Zionists living along the fence separating Gaza from the occupied territories came out of bomb shelters. One of the missiles that managed to cross into the occupied territory landed in the nearby town of Sderot, sending shrapnel slicing into a building.
The Israeli military said everyone wanted avoid a full-blown conflict. “Quiet will be answered with quiet,” said Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a spokesman for the Zionist regime’s military.
Al-Aqsa, a tinderbox for Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sits on a hilltop sacred to Muslims. In 2021, an escalation also triggered by clashes at the scared compound spilled over into an 11-day war between the Zionist regime and Palestinians.
Over 130,000 worshippers poured into the compound for midday prayers on Friday, which ended without incident. Before dawn prayers, chaos had erupted at one of the entrances to the esplanade as Israeli forces wielding batons descended on crowds of Palestinian worshippers, who chanted slogans praising Hamas as they tried to squeeze into the site. An hour later, according to videos, people leaving the prayers staged a large scale protest on the limestone courtyard, with Palestinians raising their fists and shouting against Israel. Zionist troops forced their way into the compound, inflaming tensions during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The unrest comes at a delicate time for Al-Quds’ Old City, which on Friday was teeming with pilgrims from around the world.
The current round of violence began Wednesday after Israeli forces twice raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque — in one case fiercely beating Palestinians, who responded by hurling rocks and firecrackers. That led Thursday to rocket fire from Gaza and the barrage from southern Lebanon.
Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry said Friday it had instructed the country’s mission to the United Nations in New York to submit a complaint to the UN Security Council against the “deliberate Israeli bombing and aggression” in the south, which it condemned as “a flagrant violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty.”
Even as a tense calm took hold along the Lebanese and Gaza borders, the West Bank remained volatile. Violence has surged to new heights in the territory in recent months, with Palestinian health officials reporting the start of 2023 to be the most deadly for Palestinians in two decades.
More than 90 Palestinians have been martyred by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the year, according to an Associated Press tally. During that time, 16 people have been killed in Palestinian retaliatory attacks on Zionists.