A still image from a video shows buildings in Gaza as seen from a warplane before an air strike June 16, 2021. Israeli Defence Force (IDF)
Israeli aircraft carried out a series of airstrikes at sites in the Gaza Strip early Wednesday, the first such raids since a shaky cease-fire ended the war with Hamas last month.
The airstrikes targeted facilities used by Hamas for meetings, the Israeli military said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
On Tuesday, hundreds of Israeli ultranationalists, some chanting "Death to Arabs,” paraded in east Jerusalem in a show of force that threatened to spark renewed violence. Palestinians in Gaza responded by launching incendiary balloons.
The march posed a test for Israel's fragile new government as well as the tenuous truce that ended last month's 11-day war between Israel and Hamas.
Palestinians consider the march, meant to celebrate Israel's capture of east Jerusalem in 1967, to be a provocation.
With music blaring, hundreds of Jewish nationalists gathered and moved in front of Damascus Gate. Most appeared to be young men, and many held blue-and-white Israeli flags as they danced and sang religious songs.
The parade provided an early challenge for Israel's new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, a hardline Israeli nationalist who has promised a pragmatic approach as he presides over a delicate, diverse coalition government.
Mansour Abbas, whose Raam party is the first Arab faction to join an Israeli coalition, said the march was "an attempt to set the region on fire for political aims,” with the intention of undermining the new government.
Abbas said the police and public security minister should have canceled the event. "I call on all sides not to be dragged into an escalation and maintain maximum restraint,” he said.
