Dell Dumont
Graphics
On May 13, civilians celebrated the announcement of a cease fire in Gaza City after five days of fighting between Israel and the Islamic Jihad militant group; at least 33 people in Gaza and two people in Israel died in the violence. Israel allowed goods, food, and people to re-enter Gaza on Sun. May 14, permitting thousands of Gazan residents to return to Israel for work on construction sites and farms, after the authorities blocked entry and exit during the escalation last week
Minutes after the cease fire took effect at 10 p.m. local time, several rockets were lobbed into Israeli border communities. The Israeli military, meanwhile, said that it struck two concealed rocket launchers belonging to Islamic Jihad, minutes after hitting a training facility used by the organization. In response, Israel briefly shelled two militant outposts. Reporting no injuries, Palestinian militant leaders said they fired the rocket in error.
The five-day period of violence began when Israel conducted a series of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, called Operation Shield and Arrow. This operation started when the Israeli military killed three suspected leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement in a targeted assassination. The Israeli military described its targeted killings of Islamic Jihad commanders earlier this week as an effort to eliminate potential dangers from the territory. Israel alleged that one had been trying to establish a rocket-manufacturing operation in the West Bank.
Over the next three days, Israeli airstrikes on Gaza killed at least 28 people, including senior Palestinian militants, as well as children as young as four years old. Palestinian militants in Gaza fired over 1,200 rockets toward Israel’s southern border, killed one person, set off warning sirens as far north as the coastal city of Tel Aviv, and sent tens of thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters.