Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security assessment on Tuesday evening following rocket attacks from Gaza hours earlier that wounded three civilians.
The Israel Defense Forces said terrorists in the Palestinian coastal enclave fired at least 22 projectiles in a major barrage. A 25-year-old civilian was moderately wounded by a rocket fired into the southern Israeli city of Sderot. Two other civilians were lightly wounded while working on the same construction site.
According to Netanyahu’s office, the prime minister was meeting at Camp Moshe Dayan north of Tel Aviv with senior military and security officials, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy, National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and Military Secretary Avi Gil.
Also joining the meeting was the deputy commander of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet); the head of the IDF Southern Command; commanders of the IDF’s Operations and Research divisions; and the heads of the IDF’s Intelligence and Operations directorates.
In a rare show of support for Netanyahu’s government, opposition leader Yair Lapid tweeted that “the opposition will back the government in any military action that will bring quiet and security to residents of the south.”
The tweet was sent just 11 minutes after a previous tweet by the Yesh Atid head and previous prime minister criticizing the current government. Lapid wrote that his “heart is with the residents of the south,” saying they “deserve a government that will take care of their security.”
Sderot Mayor Alon Davidi, a frequent critic of successive government policies towards the Gaza Envelope communities under direct fire from Gaza-based terrorist groups, voiced his frustration at the situation.
“Enough with the lip service. There are terror groups ruling Gaza. They shoot when they want. We need to assassinate them,” Davidi told Channel 13 from the construction site where the three workers were wounded.
“If we don’t take care of this now and put it at the top of the agenda, before any other thing the government wants to do—bringing down prices or not—the safety of residents of the south and of Sderot must come before everything else,” he emphasized.
Earlier Tuesday, IDF Armored Corps tanks fired shells at terrorist assets in the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian rocket fire targeting Israeli civilian population centers in the morning.
The military has instructed residents along the border with the Hamas-ruled enclave to remain close to shelter in anticipation of a possible escalation in violence.
Palestinian terrorists fired four projectiles towards the Jewish state early on Tuesday after senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Khader Adnan died in prison following an 87-day hunger strike.
