GAZA CITY: Israel’s army launched new air strikes on Sunday against Hamas positions in Gaza and closed the fishing zone around the Palestinian enclave in response to rockets and firebombs sent into Israeli territory.

The Israeli measures came after a week of heightened tensions, including clashes on Saturday evening along the Gaza-Israeli border, the army said.

Dozens of Palestinian “rioters burned tyres, hurled explosive devices and grenades towards the security fence and attempted to approach it,” an Israeli army statement said.

Long simmering Palestinian anger has flared further since Israel and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday agreed to normalise relations, a move Palestinians saw as a betrayal of their cause by the Gulf country.

Read: Israel-UAE deal draws varied international reactions as some call it 'good news', others slam it as 'shameful'

In the days before the UAE deal was announced, Israel had carried out repeated night-time strikes on targets linked to the Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza.

The army said the strikes were in response to makeshift firebombs attached to balloons and kites sent into southern Israel, causing thousands of fires.

Israel said there were 19 such Palestinians attacks on Saturday alone, in addition to two rockets fired from Gaza, which were intercepted by its Iron Dome defence system.

Israel responded with strikes on several Hamas targets including “a military compound used to store rocket ammunition,” the army said.

Defence minister and alternate prime minister Benny Gantz charged that Hamas’s refusal to stop the attacks is preventing Gazans from living “in dignity and security”.

If Sderot, the southern Israel town most affected by the balloon attacks, “isn’t quiet, then Gaza won’t be either,” Gantz said. Sderot mayor Alon Davidi said that Israel needed to deal forcefully with “terrorists ... who try to murder us and our children”.

But a durable solution also required providing better economic opportunities “to help civilians on both sides,” including Palestinians in Gaza, Davidi said.

Following attacks earlier this week, Israel on Wednesday slashed Gaza’s permitted coastal fishing zone from 15 nautical miles to eight, a punitive move often used by the Jewish state in response to Gaza unrest.

After Saturday’s clashes and rocket fire, Israel’s military decided “to entirely shut down the fishing zone of the Gaza Strip, immediately and until further notice, starting this morning (Sunday),” a military statement said.

Gaza fisherman Yasser Salah said he was out on the waters early Sunday and was “surprised” to learn from an Israeli patrol that the coastal sea area was “completely closed”.

“We did nothing,” said Salah. “We don’t get involved in politics. We are fishermen who live off what we catch in the sea.” Israel has also closed its Kerem Shalom goods crossing with the Gaza Strip.

Despite a truce last year backed by the UN, Egypt and Qatar, the two sides clash sporadically with rockets, mortar fire or incendiary balloons.

The Gaza Strip has a population of two million, more than half of whom live in poverty, according to the World Bank.

The IDF said Hamas “is responsible for all events transpiring in the Gaza Strip and emanating from it, and will bear the consequences for terror activity against Israeli civilians”.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2020