The conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants continues to escalate. Israeli fighter jets unleashed a series of heavy airstrikes at multiple locations in Gaza City earlier today. This came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled the fourth war with Gaza’s Hamas rulers would rage on. Hamas also pressed on, launching rockets from civilian areas in Gaza toward civilian areas in Israel. Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, launched the rocket attacks last week, in retaliation for Israeli police clashes with Palestinians near al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, in East Jerusalem.
According to Israel’s defence forces, more than 2,000 rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel since the start of the conflict, around half of them intercepted by the ‘Iron Dome’ air defence systems. Civil unrest between Jews and Arabs in Israel itself dealt a strong blow to efforts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents to unseat the Israeli leader after a series of inconclusive elections, giving rise to expectations that Israelis will go to the polls for an unprecedented fifth time in just over two years.
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