The US denounced on Wednesday the rocket attacks against Israel launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement and called for an immediate halt to what it described as “terrorist attacks” shortly after the Israeli army said its warplanes launched on Wednesday evening 29 aerial strikes against Palestinian positions in different areas of the Gaza Strip.
The US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki issued a statement saying that: “The United States condemns in the strongest terms [Wednesday’s] rocket attacks into Israel by terrorists from the Gaza Strip.”
“It is reprehensible that dozens of rockets have been fired today alone. There is no justification for such attacks. We call for these terrorist attacks to cease immediately. Israel, like any nation, has a right to defend itself,” she added.
The Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip fired on Wednesday nearly fifty rockets against southern Israel in response to the killing of three of its members in an Israeli aerial raid on Tuesday.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to carry out a “very strong” response to the latest rocket attacks, while Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned that: “there is no choice but a full takeover of the Strip.”
Since 2006, Israel has imposed a draconian siege on the Palestinians living in Gaza, preventing essential items like food, medicine and construction materials from freely entering into the Strip. The siege was tightened after the July 2013 military coup in Egypt, with Egyptian authorities limiting access to the Rafah border crossing and destroying the smuggling tunnels. Since then, the UN and other international aid agencies have warned that Gaza is quickly becoming uninhabitable as humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate.