Heavy Israeli air strikes hit Gaza as fighting enters second week

Israeli warplanes unleashed a fierce air bombardment on Gaza City before dawn on Monday as Hamas militants in the coastal enclave continued to target towns in southern Israel with barrages of rockets, bringing the conflict into a second, grinding week of bloodshed and destruction.

Stepped-up diplomatic efforts led by the United States and a meeting of the United Nations Security Council over the weekend showed little sign of progress. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, speaking on Sunday, said the operation would “take time.”

“We’ll do whatever it takes to restore order and quiet,” Netanyahu said during a television appearance. The overnight bombardment came after the deadliest day of the conflict, which included a strike in Gaza City that left three buildings flattened and killed at least 42 people.

The Israeli military said it had been targeting the warren of tunnels used by militants that runs beneath the city and that when the tunnels collapsed, the buildings came tumbling down as well. Among the dead, yet again, were children. At least 10 in this location. In the past week, of the nearly 200 Palestinians who have died, nearly half have been women and children, sparking condemnation across the world and helping to fan protests, which have taken place in recent days from London to Baghdad to Berlin.

Regional conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians have periodically become conflated with tensions among Europe’s sometimes polarised communities, particularly in countries like France with large Muslim and Jewish communities. Concerns were growing that anger against Israel was boiling over into anti-Semitic violence.

But even under sustained military bombardment, Hamas militants based in Gaza continued to unleash a barrage of missiles into southern Israel — more than 3,100 since the start of the conflict a week ago, according to the Israeli military.

Many of the rockets were intercepted yet again by the Israeli defence system known as the Iron Dome. 

Biden approves $735 mn arms sale to Israel

US President Joe Biden has approved a $735 million sale of precision-guided weapons to Israel, the Washington Post has reported. According to the paper, Congress was officially notified of the proposed sale on 5 May - almost a week before the current violence began.

According to BBC, some of Biden's fellow Democrats are now criticising the sale, the paper reports. One Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee told the paper that "allowing this proposed sale of smart bombs to go through without putting pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire will only enable further carnage."