from
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/israel-has-a-right-to-defend-itself-us-president-joe-biden-jew-arab-palestine-hamas-gaza-violence-101620876933789.html

(If far left extremists like Baxter want to work
to tear down Biden, well,,,, have at it.)

'Israel has a right to defend itself', says US president Joe Biden
as Gaza violence escalates

US president Joe Biden said, "Israel has a right to defend itself when
you have thousands of rockets flying into your territory.” Meanwhile,
violence escalated in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip as relentless Israeli
air raids and Palestinian rocket barrages continued killing innocents.

Bloomberg |
PUBLISHED ON MAY 13, 2021 09:24 AM IST
Fierce clashes between the Israeli military and rocket squads in the
Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip spurred a concerted diplomatic push to end the
most serious fighting to convulse the area since a 2014 war.

“My expectation and hope are that this will be closing down sooner than
later,” US president Joe Biden told reporters at the White House. “But
Israel has a right to defend itself when you have thousands of rockets
flying into your territory.”

The US dispatched an envoy to the region and Egypt and Qatar sought to
help broker a truce as relentless Israeli air raids and Palestinian
rocket barrages sent the death toll climbing through the night on
Wednesday. More than 60 Palestinians have been reported killed in Gaza
and at least six people in Israel since the violence abruptly exploded
late Monday.

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The bombardments continued unabated into Wednesday evening as Hamas
unleashed a massive volley of rockets at metropolitan Tel Aviv, Israel’s
commercial heartland, and the nation’s south that overwhelmed missile
defenses. Sirens were heard also in the north. Netanyahu warned that
“Hamas will pay a very heavy price for its aggression,” and a torrent of
airstrikes followed, targeting military facilities, buildings used by
the Islamic militant group, and key intelligence and military commanders.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke on Wednesday with Qatari
Foreign Minister Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani while Secretary of
State Antony Blinken spoke with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas after talking to Netanyahu and telling him it is “vital now to
deescalate.”

“Images that came out overnight are harrowing and the loss of any
civilian life is a tragedy,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said
Wednesday. “I’ve asked Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Hady Amr, to
go to the region immediately to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.”

Egyptian efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas have so
far failed to lead to a breakthrough, several Israeli and Arab media
outlets reported.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country’s foreign
minister, Sameh Shoukry, had spoken to his Israeli counterpart, Gabi
Ashkenazi, and emphasized “the need to stop the Israeli attacks on the
Palestinian territories and on the importance of sparing the people of
the region any further escalation and the use of force.”

Israel reported in excess of 1,500 rocket strikes, including a new
nighttime barrage in response to the assassination Wednesday of a group
of Hamas military commanders. Hamas said more than 550 government and
residential buildings had been targeted in Israeli raids.

Israeli defense officials accused militants of using Gaza civilians as
human shields by launching rockets from civilian structures such as
schools and populated neighborhoods.

‘Only the Beginning’

Netanyahu warned that other senior militant commanders would be targeted
for assassination. “It’s only the beginning,” he said at a Tel Aviv-area
hospital where some of the Israeli wounded had been taken. “We will
strike at them in ways they never dreamed of.”

Military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus told reporters
in a briefing that preparation for a ground maneuver “is not where we
are at this stage.”

The United Nations Security Council met for a second emergency session
on the crisis for Wednesday, though the U.S. is so far holding up any
statement.

The hostilities spilled over from weeks of clashes between Israeli
security forces and Palestinians in contested Jerusalem. The holy city,
home to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian shrines, lies at the heart of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and competing claims to it have
underpinned the latest confrontation.

“The occupation set this fire in Jerusalem and is responsible for any
bombing that takes place,” Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said late
Tuesday. “If the occupation wants to escalate, then the resistance is
ready, and if it wants to stop, the resistance is also ready.”

The violence has set off a wave of protests by Israeli Arabs in support
of the Palestinians, and unprecedented clashes with Jews, and
destruction of property in several cities. A curfew was imposed
Wednesday in the central city of Lod, where Jews and Arabs live in a
mixed community after Arab assailants set synagogues, shops, and cars on
fire following the killing of an Arab resident by a Jewish man.

Israel and Gaza have skirmished repeatedly since Hamas took control of
Gaza in 2007, and have fought three wars, the last seven years ago.

The current round has roots in tensions that have been festering since
the beginning of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in April. Israeli
restrictions on gathering at a traditional Ramadan meeting place outside
Jerusalem’s Old City touched off the unrest, but after they were lifted,
protests were rekindled by the threatened evictions of Palestinians from
longtime homes in the eastern sector of the city that Israel captured
from Jordan in 1967. The Palestinians and much of the international
community consider East Jerusalem occupied territory.

Fighting is flaring at a time when Netanyahu’s rivals are trying to
piece together a government after the fourth election in two years, and
it has already impeded those efforts.

Mansour Abbas, head of the Islamist United Arab List faction, froze
negotiations to join that potential coalition, citing the ongoing
conflict. The lethal surge in violence has made it untenable for Abbas
to join a Zionist-led government at this time, but he told Israel Radio
on Wednesday that he’ll go back to talks once the fighting is over.

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