“I was with my wife and children at home when we heard the sound of a huge explosion. Two minutes later, I looked out the window and saw a horrible scene. A house nearby was destroyed,” Abdul Rahman, a resident of the Jabaliya refugee camp who did not want his full name used for security reasons, told AFP, a little more than a week after the latest round of violence between Israel and terror groups that based in Gaza. One of the rockets fired at Israel “landed at home,” he said. Souha, another Jabaliya resident, said “it’s war and there are mistakes of occupation and resistance,” a reference to Israel and Islamic Jihad. “But the reason for the war is still occupation,” added the woman, who “saw a rocket fall [her] neighbors house.” She also preferred not to give her middle name, for similar reasons. Get The Times of Israel Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories By signing up, you agree to the terms Israel said it launched airstrikes and artillery against Palestinian Islamic Jihad positions on August 5 as a “preemptive” operation to stop an imminent cross-border attack. In three days of fighting, Islamic Jihad fired more than a thousand rockets, some deep into Israel, and Israeli airstrikes targeted Islamic Jihad bases, stores, rocket launchers and terrorist leaders. Most of the rockets fired from Gaza either hit unpopulated areas or were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Some broke into residential areas, where shrapnel injured four people. In Gaza, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-run enclave, 49 Palestinians were killed, 17 of them children, and more than 350 were injured. PIJ rocket launches, lands in Gaza neighborhood during Mayadeen TV live broadcast – Journalist claims it was launched towards the sea, asks the cameraman to move the camera away pic.twitter.com/S9GwFmSs6L — MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 8, 2022 Israel says about a dozen of the children killed in Gaza, and several of the other civilian deaths, were caused by PIJ rockets falling or misfiring, including at the Jabaliya camp. There, the IDF said, a rogue Islamic Jihad rocket was responsible for the deaths of at least four minors. The IDF has released video and radar data to bolster this charge. The IDF said about 200 PIJ rockets failed to get through to Israel. Israel said it was targeting only terrorists and made every effort to spare civilians. The Associated Press reported that at least one strike, which killed a senior Islamic Jihad commander in the southern city of Rafah late on August 6, also killed five civilians as Israel leveled one house and heavily damaged others. Even PIJ members acknowledged that the three-day escalation dealt a blow to their leadership. Palestinians search through the rubble of a building where Khaled Mansour, a top Islamic Jihad fighter, was killed in an Israeli airstrike, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa, File) The conflict exposed the frustration of ordinary Palestinians in the poverty-stricken coastal enclave, which has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since 2007 to prevent arms smuggling to Gaza terror groups. In rare outspoken criticism, some Palestinians even publicly rebuked PIJ on social media for the errant rockets. A Palestinian boy holding an Islamic Jihad flag on August 8, 2022 walks past a portrait of the terror group’s senior commander Khaled Mansour, who was killed in the latest Israel-Gaza fighting, during a mourning gathering in Rafah in the southern Strip of Gaza. as a ceasefire was declared by Israel and the PIJ after a three-day conflict. (SAID KATIB/AFP) Muhammed Shehada, of the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory for Human Rights, said the rockets that fell were larger, designed to hit the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv and beyond. “They (Islamic Jihad) have tried to improve the range and explosive power of their missiles — but not with a solid scientific basis,” said Shehada, a Gaza-based analyst. Rockets are fired toward Israel from Gaza City in the Gaza Strip, August 7, 2022. (Hatem Moussa/AP) “Those that went beyond 40 kilometers (25 miles) were not mechanically or technically savvy. They were the ones who fell back in Gaza,” he said. Two rockets landed on the outskirts of Jerusalem, more than 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Gaza, but were intercepted by Israel. The issue of rockets was a matter of “tremendous frustration and bitterness for the wider people of Gaza,” he added. The three-day escalation has also exacerbated divisions among Gaza’s Islamist rulers, Hamas, which, while offering public support for Islamic Jihad, has not joined the fight. Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders Tayseer Jabari (L) and Khalid Mansour attend a parade for the movement’s military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades in Gaza City on May 5, 2022. (AFP) Hamas leaders were furious with Islamic Jihad’s recklessness, they said, a senior official in the West Bank told AFP. “Hamas has repeatedly offered Islamic Jihad to help design and improve the missiles, but Jihad always says it is under control,” Sehada said. Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nakhaleh — speaking from Iran, where he was visiting when the conflict broke out — declared victory in the battle. Unlike previous clashes, Islamic Jihad had little to show for it after the conflict ended in an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on August 7, Sehanda said. Ali Fadawi, deputy head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (C), raises his fists with other officials during a protest in Tehran on August 9, 2022, in support of the Palestinians, following the latest round of fighting between Israel and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. (ATTA KENARE/AFP) “Usually Hamas would agree to a ceasefire with some tangible deliverable to the people of Gaza,” he told AFP. “This offers nothing.” Local resident Said Bessia pointed to a hole blasted through concrete where a rocket killed a Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander. “He was sitting here,” Bessia said, referring to Tayseer Jabari, who was meeting with several top fighters on the sixth floor of the Palestine Tower building on August 5. Prime Minister Yair Lapid said the strikes “delivered a devastating blow” targeting “the entire senior military command” of the Iran-backed group in Gaza. Masked men from the Al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad group’s military wing, stand with their weapons and flags during a rally to mark a shooting spree in Israel in which a Palestinian killed two Israelis, outside the main mosque in Khan Younis city. southern Gaza Strip, April 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Adel Hana) A senior Islamic Jihad leader told AFP the commanders killed were replaced “within minutes”, but Ahmed al-Mudallal, from the group’s political office, acknowledged the impact. “This round was difficult,” he told AFP. “We lost a lot of important military leaders who were important to us.” Mundalal’s son Ziad – an Islamic Jihad officer – was killed along with senior commander Khaled Mansour in an attack in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Mundalal vowed that the movement he helped create would bounce back. He had lost other leaders before, he said. “And that never stopped the resistance of the people and the journey of jihad.”
