After a rocket had landed in an open area north of the Gaza Strip Tuesday night, in the Jewish settlements of the Ashkelon Coast Regional Council—without damage or casualties, Israeli Air Force planes on Wednesday overnight retaliated by bombing a Hamas military compound in the southern Gaza Strip, The IDF Spokesperson announced.
The rocket was shot from the northern Gaza Strip, confirming what Arab sources had been saying about the rockets that have been shot in recent weeks: they were not shot by some Salafi irregulars in the northern Sinai, as Hamas was claiming, but by the Islamic Jihad inside Gaza – making those rockets the responsibility of the Hamas government, which Israel sees as the sovereign in Gaza.
Those Arab sources, according to Israel’s Channel 2 News, suggest that the recent smattering of rockets at Israel—one of which landed in a kindergarten in the Israeli town of Sderot, is part of the Islamic Jihad’s policy of undermining the reconciliation efforts of Hamas and Fatah.
On Sunday, after the Iron Dome defense system had shot down a rocket and another rocket exploded in an open field north of the Gaza border, the IDF retaliated by shelling Hamas positions with tank fire and then by an aerial bombing.