It’s been over a week of ongoing violence, death and destruction in Israel-Palestine. Here is a brief overview:
- In Israel, 10 people were killed in Hamas rocket and missile attacks. 2 people died in civil unrest. 2 children were killed.
- In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 227 people, including 64 children, and 1,620 have been wounded as of Wednesday afternoon.
- In the West Bank, 20 people have been killed related to clashes with Israeli security forces.
Day by day:
Monday, May 10 | Israeli police raid al Aqsa mosque, Hamas fire rockets at Jerusalem, Israel retaliates with airstrikes. There’s also the background of ongoing Palestinians protest over a neighborhood called Sheikh Jarrah, where hundreds of Palestinians may be evicted from their homes.
Tuesday, May 11 | Israeli Arab protestors take to the streets, with some starting fires. In Lod, the protesters burn synagogues, shops and cars. Rockets and airstrikes continue.
Wednesday, May 12 | Mob violence between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs spreads across cities in Israel. Jewish protestors severely beat an Arab man in Bat Yam, Israel. Arab protestors beat a Jewish man in Acre, Israel. An Israeli Arab man in the central Israeli city of Lod was shot dead.
Thursday, May 13 | Israel’s army unleashes a wider military attack on Gaza Thursday night. “I said that we would exact a very heavy price on Hamas,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says. “We are doing this and we will continue with great force.”
Friday, May 14 | Hamas continues firing rockets into Israel, Israel continues bombing Gaza heavily. Violence also erupts in the West Bank as Israeli soldiers open fire on demonstrators.
Saturday, May 15 | Israel bombs a 12-story building in Gaza City known as a center for journalists covering the region, including the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera. President Biden speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to urge a cease-fire. Hamas fires more rockets toward the Tel Aviv area.
Sunday, May 16 | The deadliest day yet in a week of fighting. Israeli barrage kills at least 42 in Gaza as Hamas continues rocket attacks.
Monday, May 17 | Israel continues bombing Gaza, including the destruction of a seven-mile stretch of Hamas tunnel bunkers. Hamas continues to fire rockets at southern Israel. A Jewish Israeli man dies as a result of injuries he sustained in an assault by Arabs protesters in Lod last week.
Tuesday, May 18 | Israeli Arabs and Palestinians go on a general strike. In Israel, the strike shuts down the Arabic-language school system and municipal services in Arab-majority cities.
Wednesday, May 19 | Hamas militants continue to fire rockets into Israel, which continues to respond with airstrikes on Gaza. There’s mounting pressure for Israel and Hamas to agree to ceasefire, including increasingly strong language from Biden and members of Congress.
A humanitarian crisis unfolds in Gaza:
- The United Nations said that more than 58,000 Palestinians in Gaza had been displaced from their homes, many huddling in U.N.-run schools that have in effect become bomb shelters.
- Israeli strikes have damaged schools, power lines, and water, sanitation and sewage systems for hundreds of thousands of people in a territory that has been under blockade by Israel and Egypt for more than a decade.
- Covid-19 vaccinations have stopped, and on Tuesday an Israeli strike knocked out the only lab in the territory that processes coronavirus tests.
Israeli-Palestinian strife feeds a spate of antisemitic acts:
- Rocks thrown at doors of a synagogue in Bonn, Germany.
- Israeli flags burned outside a synagogue in Münster, Germany
- “Free Palestine” is spray-painted on a synagogue in Ceuta, Spain
- A convoy of cars in North London from which a man chanted anti-Jewish slurs,“F*ck the Jews; rape their daughters.”
- In Los Angeles, a group of men shouting antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew,” attacked diners. No one was seriously hurt, and police are investigating it as a hate crime.
- President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey remarked Israelis are “murderers, to the point that they kill children who are 5 or 6 years old,” and are “only are satisfied by sucking blood,” which is an age-old antisemitic stereotype called a blood libel.
