GAZA CITY: Six Palestinians were killed and 32 injured by Israeli strikes on Gaza after militants fired on an Israeli jeep, wounding four soldiers, medics and witnesses said on Sunday.
The flare-up, which began on Saturday, was one of the most serious since Israel's devastating 22-day operation in the Gaza Strip over New Year 2009.
In the latest in a spate of attacks and counter-attacks between the army and Palestinians, a suspected militant was killed and two other people wounded in an Israeli air strike near the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya overnight, medics said.
The dead man was named as Mohammed Shwikani, a 20-year-old militant with the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, the group said.
Early on Sunday, medics reported finding the body of another suspected militant, 20-year-old Mohammed Abed, who was killed in another air strike east of Jabaliya, raising the death toll to six over 12 hours of bloodshed.
The Israeli military said it had attacked seven different targets overnight, including arms dumps, a weapons-making facility and two rocket-launching sites "in response to recent events."
The army said at least 36 rockets fired from Gaza had landed in Israel during the flare-up, with a new barrage on Sunday morning injuring four people in the Israeli town of Sderot, several kilometres from the border.
The violence erupted Saturday evening when militants fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli jeep near the Karni crossing along the border east of Gaza City.
The army confirmed four soldiers were wounded in the attack, which was claimed by the armed wing of the left-leaning Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Military sources said two of the soldiers were in serious condition.
In response, Israel fired a barrage of artillery fire and shells, killing four people and wounding 32, according to Ashraf al Qudra, spokesman for the Hamas-run health ministry.
Medics said 10 of the injured were in "serious to critical condition" and Qudra said 10 of those wounded had undergone amputations.
He named the four civilians killed as 20-year-old Matar Abul Ata, 17-year-old Mohamed Harara, 15-year-old Ahmed Harara and 18-year-old Ahmed Dardasawy.
The violence prompted authorities on both sides of the border to close some schools.
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This Times of India excerpt of June 18, 2012 facilitates understanding of Israel's behavior.
RABBI OVADIA Rabbi Ovadia Yosef is the former Chief Rabbi of Israel and the spiritual leader of the Shas party, Israels “kingmaker” party. In a sermon given on Saturday on laws concerning what non-Jews are permitted to do on Shabbat, Yosef said: "Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat." According to Yosef, death has "no dominion" over non-Jews in Israel. "With gentiles, it will be like any person - they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant... That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”
MENACHEM BEGIN "Our race is the Master Race. We Jews are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact, compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves."
Besieged Palestinian Gaza is an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment? Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now under attack you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation. And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.