ISRAEL: Israel beefs up forces outside Gaza as border heats up

Record ID: 398607

  • Title: ISRAEL: Israel beefs up forces outside Gaza as border heats up
  • Date: 3rd July 2014
  • Summary: TEL-AVIV, ISRAEL (JULY 2, 2014) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF DIRECTOR OF THE MOSHE DAYAN CENTER AT TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY, PROFESSOR UZI RABI, AT DESK (SOUNDBITE) (English) DIRECTOR OF THE MOSHE DAYAN CENTER AT TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY, PROFESSOR UZI RABI, SAYING: "I think that the key word here is "combustibility". Everybody knows that if Israel hits hard and becomes very penetrative wh
  • Embargoed: 18th July 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA5LSZFJ1HOJ1PS1DBGNNVJ7GES
  • Story Text: Israel reinforced security on the Gaza border on Thursday (July 3) after launching air strikes against militant Hamas targets there, in response to persistent Palestinian cross-border rocket attacks, as violence continued to grow in the wake of the deaths of three kidnapped Israeli teenagers.
    Heavily armoured vehicles were seen driving to the border at Nahal Oz, as the country faced a second day of violent Palestinian protests in Jerusalem after the discovery of the body of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy on Wednesday (July 2) in a forest near the city.
    Israeli Finance Minister Yari Lapid was seen visiting the town Sderot, where rockets fell and damaged some homes.
    Speaking to media outside one of the damaged properties, Lapid refused to confirm or deny whether a ground operation into Gaza was imminent.
    "We will continue to act all the time," he told reporters.
    "The goal is that the citizens of Sderot will live in calm, and we will reach that goal one way or another," he said.
    "The state of Israel needs to act with power and with patience. Patience is also a kind of force," Lapid added.
    Israeli police are investigating the possibility that the Palestinian boy's death was a revenge killing over the deaths of three Jewish teenagers, whose abduction on June 12 Israel has blamed on Islamist Hamas militants in the occupied West Bank.
    Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said troops were taking up "defence positions" in Israeli communities that have been struck by the rockets from Gaza. He did not comment on the scale of the deployment.
    It is the first time since the border began to heat up in mid-June - in tandem with an Israeli military sweep and search for the three abducted Israeli youths in the West Bank - that Israel has announced troop movements near the Gaza Strip.
    Professor Uzi Rabi of Tel Aviv University said tensions could escalate in light of recent violence.
    "I think that the key word here is "combustibility"," Rabi told Reuters TV.
    "Everybody knows that if Israel hits hard and becomes very penetrative when it comes to the West Bank and Gaza, this, especially in the Ramadan month, could create kind of a full-scale violence and that could be the introduction to another Intifada," he said.
    "Netanyahu thinks, and his government, we should deter Hamas, we should punish Hamas, but not to the extent of bringing it to what I call full-scale violence," he added.
    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said if Gaza rocket fire stopped then Israel would also halt its actions.
    But he added in a speech on Thursday that if "firing toward our residents in the south continues, then our bolstered forces there will act forcefully".
    A forceful response is exactly what residents in the southern town of Sderot, near Gaza, are clamouring for.
    Dozens demonstrated on Thursday, saying those who killed the three Jewish teens must face imprisonment or death penalty.
    "We believe in the sanctity of life, and we continue to believe in the sanctity of life, and our message is very clear; there has to be a response," Sderot resident David Fendel said.
    "We have to show the entire world that gone are the days when they can murder three children and the world is silent," he added.
    The military said Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had fired 20 projectiles into Israel on Thursday and that rockets struck two homes in the southern town of Sderot, causing no casualties.
    Israel launched air strikes against at least three Hamas training facilities in Gaza, residents said, adding that 15 people had been injured.
    U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay condemned both Israelis and Palestinians on Thursday for the latest flare-up of violence across the Gaza border and also Abu Khudair's killing.
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