There seems to be a gathering storm over the Hamas in Jerusalem. Hamas’s military wing said seven of its fighters have been killed in southern Gaza by Israeli air strikes. More than twenty rockets had on the other hand been fired from Gaza into southern Israel. The cycle of violence has been going on following the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank. In retaliation a Palestinian teenager was killed in Jerusalem. Two Gaza militants believed to belong to a radical Salafi group had also been killed in an airstrike. The Israeli military claimed that one of its patrols was attacked near the Gaza border possibly with an anti-tank missile. Street clashes between young Arab protestors and Israeli security forces occurred in parts of East Jerusalem and in Arab towns. This was after the Israeli authorities announced the arrest of six Israeli Jews alleged to be involved in the killing of the Palestinian teenager.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with the Palestinian youth’s father expressing his outrage and that of the citizens of Israel over the reprehensible murder of his son. He said that immediate action had been taken to bring the murderers to book. Israel, he said, denounced all brutal murders and he asked for equanimity. But there has been a rift in the government. Israeli foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has snapped a twenty month political alliance with the Prime Minister as he thought that the ruling coalition was not taking adequate action against Palestinian Hama militants.
