Israel boosts forces near Gaza border amid tension
Print Edition
ISRAEL deployed extra forces on its border with Gaza yesterday after continued Palestinian rocket fire and heightened tensions following the suspected revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem.
“We are moving and we have moved forces in order to serve defense activities and forward preparation, but we have no interest in escalation,” army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told journalists.
The reinforcements were reserve officers at “headquarter level, not in the field”, Lerner said, and were a purely defensive measure.
Armed forces chief Lieutenant General Benny Gantz sent a similar message in comments tweeted by the army. “We are looking for calm, not escalation, but if Hamas chooses to act against us we shall be ready.”
Israeli warplanes pounded targets inside the Gaza Strip yesterday and militants hit back with 16 rockets.
In east Jerusalem’s Shuafat neighborhood, masked Palestinians hurled stones and fireworks at Israeli police and sent burning car tires rolling along streets in a second day of protest over the kidnap and murder of local 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khder.
Many believe his was a copycat killing following the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank last month. Israel police say the motive for the Abu Khder’s killing is still unclear, and have not said how he died.
But the family’s lawyer said the boy’s body had been burnt “beyond recognition.”
It was not known when he would be buried.
In clashes on Wednesday, 232 Palestinians were injured, 178 of them in Shuafat alone, said Dr Amin Abu Ghazali of the Red Crescent in east Jerusalem.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced Abu Khder’s killing as “despicable” and urged both sides “not to take the law into their own hands”.
One of the families of the three murdered Israeli teens described it as a “horrendous act.”
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas demanded that Netanyahu act against revenge attacks and called for Abu Khder’s killers to be caught.
Four Israeli soldiers who allegedly used social media to call for revenge and to “annihilate terrorists” were jailed for 10 days by the military.
But the Islamist Hamas movement, whom Israel has blamed for the kidnap and murder of the three teenagers in June, said it held Netanyahu’s government directly responsible for the killing of Abu Khder.
“You will pay the price for your crimes,” it said.
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