A fragile truce between Israeli forces and militants in the Gaza Strip was in place on Sunday after five days of fighting that killed 33 Palestinians and two Israelis.
A fresh round of fighting in Gaza began on Tuesday after Israeli jets killed three commanders of the Islamic Jihad armed group in response to rockets fired from Gaza. Those deaths triggered a spate of militant attacks and threaten to drag the region into another open war until an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire comes into force late on Saturday.
Although the peace seemed to bring a sense of relief to two million Gazans and hundreds of thousands of Israelis who in recent days were largely confined to bomb shelters, the accord failed to resolve issues that had plagued Israel. This has given rise to several rounds of beach fighting. and Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip over the years.
In Gaza, the population was evaluating the latest damage done to their environment, with large holes in apartments where, according to Israel, six prominent members of the Islamic Jihad group killed in the offensive were hiding. The main goods route between Gaza and Israel was due to open on Sunday after warnings that keeping it closed would shut down Gaza’s only solar power plant, exacerbating an energy crisis.
Israel lifted most of the restrictions on the population of southern Israel, which bore the brunt of the rocket fire.
Israeli officials have expressed their satisfaction with the latest fighting, in which they have eliminated several Islamic Jihad commanders in targeted strikes based on reliable information. But at least 13 civilians were among the dead in Gaza, including children under the age of 4 and women.
Rights groups have criticized Israel in the past for civilian casualties in its bombings of Gaza. Israel says it is doing everything it can to avoid harming civilians in its attacks and says militants fire rockets indiscriminately into Israeli towns from densely populated areas of the region.
