Gaza-Israel clashes began on 11 November 2018, when a botched Israeli covert operation carried out in the Khan Yunis area of the southern Gaza Strip killed seven Palestinian militants and one Israeli soldier. Exchanges of fire lasted for two more days, until a cease fire was achieved with Egyptian mediation. Some minor incidents and protests followed some two weeks after the cease fire, with decreasing intensity.
The operation
According to Hamas armed wing the al-Qassam Brigades, witness reports, recordings of radio chatter obtained by Israeli news program Hadashot corroborating the story, and the IDFs own report the operation proceeded as follows:
Intrusion into Gaza
On 11 November, Israeli special forces entered Gaza in a blue Volkswagen van through one of the official border crossings, either through Israel's Erez Crossing or Egypt's Rafah Crossing, and the group provided identity documents. Following the crossing, the group passed through two checkpoints; one controlled by the Palestinian Authority and one controlled by Hamas using forged IDs with the names of well-known local Palestinian families. The group were dressed in traditional Palestinian Muslim attire and two of them disguised as women.
Spotting by Nour Baraka and questioning
A local Hamas commander named Nour Baraka spotted the van outside his window in Khan Yunis three kilometers into Gazan territory. The van was then stopped at a Hamas checkpoint for questioning. The Israelis claimed that they were NGO workers, part of a medical team ferrying patients in the area and that they had a wheelchair in the back of the van. According to the sources, the questioning lasted for 40 to 45 minutes.
Several things didn't seem right to the Palestinians. The accents of the Israelis didn't match the location their identity cards stated that they were from. A woman sat between two men even though their IDs said they were members of different families, something that was frowned upon under local customs. Furthermore, the Israelis told Hamas that they were going to visit a woman who does not live in the area.
Senior commanders were summed to the scene and they decided to bring the Israelis into custody for further questioning. At this point, the operative identified as "Lt. Col. A" opened fire. He shot and killed Baraka and his deputy, Mohammad Majed Al-Qara, with his silenced gun. Here the sources diverge. IDF sources claim that stray bullets from Lt. Col. A's gun hit and killed his colleague Lt. Col. Mahmoud Kheireddine, in Israeli media identified as "Lt. Col. M", and wounded another Israeli surrounded by Hamas members. Hamas sources claim that Kheireddine was shot in the head by one of their fighters. The van proceeded to speed away.
Hamas takes up the chase
One Hamas vehicle took up the chase while other units scrambled to set up a roadblock. At that point, the Palestinians believed that they were dealing with a criminal gang or a rival faction. The van opened fire and sped through the roadblock.
During the pursuit, Israeli tanks and aircraft opened fire in the area to provide cover for the van's escape. Some time later the operatives stepped out of the van and faced their pursuers in a gunfight killing them all. They pulled their dead comrade's body out of the car and continued the flight on foot towards an olive grove where a Sikorsky CH-53 helicopter from the Israeli Air Force's elite Unit 669 was waiting. After extracting the soldiers, the van was struck by dozens of Israeli rockets and completely destroyed.
According to the IDFs report, the evacuation from the time Lt. Col. A killed Baraka to the helicopter landing in Israel took 20 minutes.
Gazan Health Ministry identified the killed as the aforementioned Nour Baraka, Omar Jani Abu Hatar, Mohammad Majed Al-Qara, Ala Adin Koidar, Mustafa Hassan Abu Odeh, Mahmoud Atallah Masabach and Ala Fasifis. The first six listed were Hamas members and the last a member of the Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees. According to witness reports, three of them were killed by ground-fire and three by airstrikes, one later succumbing to his wounds. The Israeli soldier was identified as "Lt. Col. M." Six more militants and one Israeli was wounded in the operation.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) quickly dispelled a rumor about a soldier having been taken prisoner, but did not provide their account of the event other than noting, in response to Hamas allegations claiming otherwise, that it was "not intended to kill or abduct terrorists, but to strengthen Israeli security." IDF chief Gadi Eizenkot said that it was a "a very meaningful operation to Israel's security." In a television interview on Sunday night, the former commander of IDFs Southern Command, general Tal Russo, speculated that the raid wasn't an assassination attempt but an intelligence-gathering mission gone wrong.
Fawzi Barhoum, spokesperson for Hamas, denounced the "cowardly Israeli attack".
Exchanges of fire
The clashes intensified over the next days as Gazan militants fired projectiles into Israel and Israeli airstrikes hit targets in Gaza. 460 projectiles were fired into Israel, of which 100 were intercepted by the Iron Dome and the majority of the projectiles that weren't fell in open areas causing neither casualties nor property damage. The IDF attacked about 160 targets in Gaza, among them several "high-quality" multi-story buildings, unprecedented since the 2014 Gaza war. These clashes killed eight Palestinians - seven in Gaza and one in Israel.
Sunday 11 November 2018
In the hours after the operation, 17 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel of which three were shot down, causing sirens to sound in southern Israel and Israeli authorities to change the flight path of aircraft landing at Ben-Gurion Airport as a precautionary measure. In communities near the Gaza border, classes were cancelled for Monday morning and farmers advised not to work in their fields.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut his visit to France short and returned to preside over a Security Cabinet meeting concerning the clashes that would be held on Tuesday. Commenting on the situation, he said that "no political solution exists for Gaza, just as there isn't one with ISIS", that he is doing what he can to avoid an "unnecessary war" and also that "we were a step away from exerting maximal force and I think Hamas understood this." In a tweet he commended the slain soldiers bravery and wrote that "our forces acted courageously."
Monday 12 November 2018
In the morning, Mousa Abu Marzook, a senior member of Hamas, said that yesterdays operation "exposed the Israeli occupation's hypocritical behavior with the international community" and the organisation issued a statement "announcing the beginning of bombardment of the enemy's settlements" as a "response to yesterday's crime." Islamic Jihad that "unless Palestinians live in peace, they won't live in peace. Playing with the lives of Palestinians can't be without a price."
At least 300 projectiles, of which 60 were intercepted, were fired from Gaza into Israel during the day, wounding nine civilians. In the afternoon in Kfar Aza a Kornet anti-tank missile hit a bus transporting soldiers, critically injuring a 19-year-old Israeli soldier standing nearby. An accompanying video showing the bus being blown up was uploaded on Twitter by the Hamas-affiliated Quds News Network. During the night to Tuesday, a rocket directly hit a residential building in Ashkelon, killing Mahmoud Abu Asba, a Palestinian man from Hebron, and wounding two women. Factions inside Gaza said these attacks were in retaliation for yesterday's Israeli operation.
The Israeli Air Force struck more than 70 targets in Gaza. Among them the building hosting Hamas' television broadcasting station Al-Aqsa which was leveled to the ground, an attack denounced by Barhoum as "a barbaric, brazen aggression." Soon after strikes destroyed Al Aqsa radio station and Al Amal Hotel, a building Hamas uses for offices. In addition, a weapons storage facility in Khan Yunis, a military building in Zeitoun and a weapons manufacturing site in Sheikh Omdan were bombarded.
The Israeli navy attacked a ship belonging to Hamas at the Nuseirat port in southern Gaza.
Three Palestinians were killed by tank fire into Gaza and nine were wounded. Two of those, Muhammad Zakariya al-Tatari and Muhammad Zuhdi Odeh, were members of the PFLP and the third, Hamad Muhammad Musa al-Nahhal, killed east of Rafah, of Islamic Jihad.
Saeb Erekat of Hamas rival faction Fatah called for "international protection" and for the international community "to prevent a new massacre in Gaza."
Commenting on the violence, Israeli deputy minister Michael Oren said that Israel "will do whatever it takes" to defend itself and that he "expects the world to stand with us."
Abu Rukun wrote on the unit's Arabic-language Facebook page a sharply worded warning addressed to the Gazans about "terrorist activity" that ended with "Residents of Gaza, look carefully at the pictures from Operation Protective Edge in 2014 – a picture is worth a thousand words", alluding to the destruction Israeli bombardment caused in the 2014 Gaza war. According to one activist, the same threat was made in English on COGAT:s Twitter feed, @cogat_israel, but was quickly deleted.
Knesset members of the opposition expressed criticism over Netanyahu's Cabinet's handling of the conflict with Hamas. Tzipi Livni of the Zionist Union stated "we have a strategic dispute with the government on the ways to attain long-term quiet ... Instead of accepting the situation, we must act, but differently", referring to the recently signed deal to allow Qatar to send $15 million in cash to Hamas.
Yesh Atid of Yair Lapid suggested that the government should take better care of persons affected by the violence, by compensating parents that needed to stay at home due to school closures and that mental health centers should receive more backing.
Tuesday 13 November 2018
Three Palestinians were killed and three more were wounded by Israeli airstrikes during the day. The victims were identified as Khaled Riyadh al-Sultan, a farmer not part of any militant group, Musaab Hoss and Khalid Akram Youssef Maarouf.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas cut his visit to Kuwait short and called for an urgent meeting among the Palestinian leadership.
Cease-fire
On Tuesday the Israeli Security Cabinet conferred in a seven-hour long meeting, from 9:00 to 16:00, behind closed doors. While the meeting was ongoing, it was reported that Hamas through mediators sought a cease-fire with Israel. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh suggested that "if Israel stops the aggression, it will be possible to go back to the cease-fire understandings... the resistance defended its people against Israeli aggression, and the Palestinian people, as usual, continued to the resist with patience and pride."
Later that day Palestinian factions in Gaza released a statement announcing that a cease-fire had been reached. Hamas said that it "appreciates efforts alongside different entities to obtain a cease-fire and we thank and cherish the Egyptian effort and the international effort, as well as the role the Norwegians and Qataris played."
On the Israeli side, the situation was more ambiguous. An unnamed Israeli official's response to queries from the press was that "Israel reserves its freedom to operate" but confirmed that "requests by Hamas to form a cease-fire came from four different mediators. Israel responded that developments on the ground will determine [the Israeli reaction]." The four mediating parties named were Egypt, the United Nations, Norway and Switzerland.
Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, who had participated in the cabinet meeting, refrained from confirming whether a cease-fire had been reached and instead put the onus on Hamas, claiming that "the Israeli military landed a harsh and unprecedented blow on Hamas" and that "we will see if that will suffice or whether further blows will be required."