Staff Sergeant Aviv Levi . (photo credit: SOCIAL MEDIA)
X ![]()
Dear Reader,
As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analyses from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
As one of our loyal readers, we ask you to be our partner.
For $5 a month you will receive access to the following:
- A user uxperience almost completely free of ads
- Access to our Premium Section and our monthly magazine to learn Hebrew, Ivrit
- Content from the award-winning Jerusalem Repor
- A brand new ePaper featuring the daily newspaper as it appears in print in Israel
Help us grow and continue telling Israel’s story to the world.
Thank you,
Ronit Hasin-Hochman, CEO, Jerusalem Post Group
Yaakov Katz, Editor-in-Chief
UPGRADE YOUR JPOST EXPERIENCE FOR 5$ PER MONTH Show me later Don’t show it again
The IDF named Aviv Levi, a 21-year-old Staff Sergeant from Petah Tikva serving in the Givati Brigade, as the soldier killed by sniper fire from the Gaza Strip Friday afternoon, which lead to massive retaliatory strikes by the Israeli military throughout the evening.
His family, which was abroad at the time of his death, was notified by the IDF. Levi, who had been wearing a protective vest, was said to have been hit in the chest by the sniper.
Described as the most serious incident along the border fence since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the soldier was the first to be killed by a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip in four years.
According to the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit, over 60 Hamas targets across the coastal enclave, including three battalion headquarters were attacked by the IAF. Other targets included weapons stores, combat equipment warehouses, training areas, observation posts, command and control rooms, battalion commander’s office and other infrastructures.
Four Palestinians were said to have been killed, three of whom Hamas affiliated.
The military said the strikes by fighter jets and tanks came as a response to the sniper fire which killed the soldier in the Kissufim area.
“Hamas will be held accountable for this incident as well as the series of the terror activities it has been executing over the past months,” the IDF said in a statement. “Hamas has chosen to escalate the security situation and will bear the responsibility for its actions.”
While a ceasefire was reached between Israel and Hamas by midnight, IDF tanks on Saturday morning fired towards a Hamas post in the northern Gaza Strip after a group of Palestinians infiltrated into Israel after crossing the security fence. There were no casualties and the group returned to the Strip.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum tweeted that the ceasefire was reached “with Egyptian and UN efforts to return to the previous situation of ceasefire between the occupation and Palestinian factions.”
The IDF had no official comment on the ceasefire announcement but announced Saturday morning that residents near the Gaza border could return to their normal schedule.
The IDF’s Home Front Command had instructed Israelis living in communities near the Gaza border on Friday afternoon to remain within a 15 second distance from a bomb shelter as well as to avoid mass gatherings. The army had also closed the Zikim beach to the public for the weekend as a precaution.
Incoming rocket sirens were activated around 8.30 p.m on Friday evening in Gaza periphery communities with two projectiles intercepted by the Iron Dome Missile Defense System and a third hitting open territory outside a community in the south.
On Friday evening Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman spoke on the phone with Nikolay Mladenov, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and warned that Hamas was “deliberately deteriorating the situation” between Israel and the Gaza Strip and that Hamas would be responsible for any loss of life.
“If Hamas continues with the rocket fire, the result will be much harsher than they think, and the responsibility for all the destruction and loss of human life will be on Hamas,” he said.
Taking to Twitter, Mladenov stated that “the actions of #Hamas, #IslamicJihad & other groups in #Gaza put at risk not only the lives of Israelis & Palestinians alike, but also efforts to ensure a livable future 4 people of Gaza. They must prevent the launching of rockets & breaching of the fence.”
“Everyone in #Gaza needs to step back from the brink. Not next week. Not tomorrow. Right NOW! Those who want to provoke #Palestinians and #Israelis into another war must not succeed,” he added.
The Israeli strikes and the launching of the Gazan projectiles came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Liberman, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, Air Force Commander Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin and other top IDF officers met in the IDF Headquarters in Tel Aviv for a security assessment.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry there were two Palestinian casualties in the earlier strikes near Khan Younis and a third was killed east of Rafiah. They were identified as Shaaban Abu Khatir, Muhammed Abu Farhana and Mahmoud Qishta.
Unconfirmed reports in Gaza stated that the leadership of Hamas’s military wing ordered the gunfire in revenge for a Qassam Brigade member, identified by the Gaza European Hospital as 38 year-old Abdul-Karim Radwan who was killed on Thursday launching incendiary kites.
But on Saturday evening Israeli media reported that defense establishment officials believed that the sniper fire was not sanctioned by Hamas and that Egyptian officials were enraged by the incident and made the Gazan terror group accept a ceasefire with Israel.
Earlier on Friday hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated along the border fence in another week of protests against the blockade of the coastal enclave. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that at least five Palestinians were injured by live bullets.
On Friday morning Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned that Hamas is pushing Israel into a wide scale Gaza war that will be larger in scope than Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
“Hamas leaders are forcibly leading us into a situation where we will have no choice, a situation in which we will have to embark on a painful, wide-scale military operation,” Liberman said as he visited the southern city of Sderot.
“Hamas is responsible for this crisis, but unfortunately it’s the Gaza residents that may have to pay the price,” he noted.
Tensions with Gaza have significantly risen following a flareup of violence last weekend when Hamas launched 200 mortars and rockets into southern Israel and Israel struck over 40 Hamas targets across the Gaza Strip.
On Thursday Liberman held a meeting to assess the situation in the south shortly after a Hamas projectile struck southern Israel.
The meeting was attended by the IDF chief of staff, the head of military intelligence, the commanders of the Southern Command and Central Command, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and members of the Shin Bet.
Comments are closed.