Casualties rise as Isreal-Palestinian war escalates

The longstanding war between Isreal and Palestine has resuscitated since Tuesday night with Israeli airstrikes targeting Hamas offices in Gaza City and militants in Gaza firing rockets at the metropolis of Tel Aviv, the southern city of Ashkelon and Israel’s main airport.

New York Times reports that at least 35 Palestinians, including 10 children, had been killed in Gaza, with 203 others wounded. Israeli medical officials said five people were killed in strikes on Tel Aviv, Ashkelon and Lod, and at least 100 were wounded.

The enmity has been long-standing across Arab neighborhoods as Palestinian citizens of Israel expressed fury at the killings in Gaza and longstanding complaints of discrimination inside Israel itself.

For more than a century, Jews and Arabs have struggled to be the masters of the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Israel has inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the Palestinians since it became independent in 1948, but it still cannot win.

As of Wednesday, it was impossible to predict when peace will return to both nations.

The international spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces, Colonel Conricus, told the New York Times that the military’s air campaign was still in its “early stages.” Punch