Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Israel and the Palestinians agreed Sunday to halt their latest round of rocket attacks and airstrikes, officials said, but the deal threatened to fall through even before it was announced when Israeli forces killed two Islamic Jihad militants in the West Bank.
Israeli forces encircled a house in the West Bank town of Qabatiyeh after sundown Sunday and killed two militants, including Jihad Zakarne, an Islamic Jihad member accused by Israel of planning a suicide bombing last week, witnesses and Palestinian security officials said. The Israeli military had no comment.
Islamic Jihad responded with a statement threatening to hit Israeli towns near Gaza and called on “Palestinian factions to be united to confront the Zionist campaign against the Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian people in the West Bank.”
Palestinians reported hearing small explosions that sounded like rockets in northern Gaza, but the military said nothing landed in Israel.
Militants in Gaza have retaliated for such Israeli raids in the West Bank by firing homemade rockets at Israel, triggering Israeli retaliation. Since the bombing in the central town of Hadera, Israel has targeted Islamic Jihad militants in airstrikes, killing eight Palestinians – three of them bystanders – and fired artillery shells at rocket-launching areas in Gaza.
It was just such an escalation that the informal agreement was designed to stop. Militant groups planned a meeting late Sunday and were expected to endorse the latest truce, but the Israeli operation in the West Bank put that in doubt.
At stake for the Palestinians is the economic survival of Gaza.
With violence simmering, Israel has kept a tight hold on the exits from the coastal strip, citing security concerns.
The main Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt has been closed for most of the time since Israel withdrew from Gaza last month without a deal on how to handle security. Cargo and worker crossings also have been closed periodically by Israel.
Talks on the Rafah crossing were to resume Sunday night, Israeli officials said.
