GAZA CITY • Israel's military yesterday said it conducted airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, after Hamas sent incendiary balloons into southern Israel from Gaza.
It was the first eruption of hostilities since an 11-day air war between Israel and Hamas ended last month.
The Israeli military said it "struck military compounds belonging to the Hamas terror organisation, which were used as facilities and meeting sites for terror operatives in Hamas' Khan Younis and Gaza Brigades".
Palestinian news reports said one of the strikes caused property damage, but there were no immediate reports of casualties in Gaza, a densely-populated urban strip.
The rising tensions were the first test of a new Israeli coalition government just three days into its term. It started when the government permitted a far-right Jewish march to pass through Palestinian areas of Jerusalem on Tuesday, ignoring objections from Arab and leftist parties in the coalition. It was also allowed despite Hamas threatening to retaliate.
The march was a scaled-down version of an aborted far-right procession planned for last month, which Hamas cited to justify its firing of rockets towards Jerusalem, setting off the latest air war between the militants and Israel.
Gaza has barely begun to recover from last month's fighting, which killed at least 250 Palestinians and 13 Israeli residents, and damaged more than 16,000 homes in Gaza, according to the United Nations.
Rebuilding has yet to restart in earnest, and Israel and Egypt, which control access to Gaza, are still withholding key financial and material assistance.
Some analysts believed those factors kept Hamas from launching full-scale rocket attacks after Tuesday's provocative Jewish procession, an annual event known as the flags march.
Hamas frequently releases incendiary balloons into southern Israel, and they tend to be less destructive than rockets, although they sometimes scorch farmland.
Israel's Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who was sworn in on Sunday, took a tough stance against the launching of these balloons in the past and criticised a previous government for its lack of response.
A few months before he was appointed defence minister in 2019, Mr Bennett tweeted that those launching the balloons were "terrorists" who should be killed.
"An explosive balloon is like an anti-tank missile," he said, adding: "Whoever launches one is a terrorist who is trying to murder Israelis and must be hit."
The new government is under tremendous pressure to be tough on Hamas - both internally, from Mr Bennett and his Yamina party, and externally, from former premier Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party. Some members of the coalition insisted that any blocking of the flags march would be giving in to threats from terrorists.
"Israel cannot be a hostage of a terrorist organisation," Israel's former military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said on Tuesday. "Hamas dictates to Israel what to do in Jerusalem. It must be shown it did not win here."
For right-wing and many centrist members, including Mr Bennett, the flags march is a matter of national pride, celebrating their right to walk in areas of Jerusalem captured by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Each year, it features thousands of marchers, but was aborted last month because of rocket fire from Gaza.
Hamas had threatened a violent response, while hinting it might not resort to something as drastic as rocket fire. "What is certain is we can't be silent in the face of the flags march, which is deeply provocative and part of the occupation's internal politics," said spokesman Mohammad Hamada. "If the occupation carries out this arrogance, we have several options in front of us."
NYTIMES
