Joe Biden spearheads global effort to broker ceasefire in Israel and Gaza

Israel faces an escalating conflict on two fronts: riots between Arabs and Jews on its streets, after days of exchanging fire with Gaza.

Gaza City’s Al-Sharouk tower in ruins after being hit by an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

Israel faced an escalating conflict on two fronts on Thursday, scrambling to quell riots between Arabs and Jews on its own streets after days of exchanging deadly fire with Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Despite diplomatic efforts to ease the crisis, which US President Joe Biden said he hoped would end “sooner than later”, hundreds of rockets flew across the Gaza Strip overnight on Wednesday.

An emergency UN Security Council meeting on the tensions has been requested for Friday. The council has already held two closed-door videoconferences since Monday, with the US — a close Israel ally — opposing adoption of a joint declaration, which it said would not “help de-escalate” the situation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on Thursday AEST to Mr Biden, who said “Israel has a right to defend itself”.

Mr Biden said US diplomacy was in high gear with national ­security and defence staff “in constant contact with their counterparts in the Middle East — not just with the Israelis, but also with everyone from the Egyptians and the Saudis to the Emiratis”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, urging an end to the rocket attacks.

Mr Blinken said Hady Amr, the State Department official in charge of Israeli and Palestinian affairs, would travel to the region to urge “de-escalation of violence”. The top US diplomat also talked with Mr Netanyahu, again pushing for both sides to step back from fighting. Mr Blinken “reiterated his call on all parties to de-­escalate tensions and bring a halt to the violence”.

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin called his Israeli counterpart, Benny Gantz, and backed Israel’s “legitimate right to defend itself and its people” while also urging steps to restore calm.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking alongside UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, called for an urgent meeting of the Middle East Quartet — Russia, the US, the UN and the EU. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged both sides to “step back from the brink”.

Israeli gunners fire a 155mm self-propelled howitzer towards targets in the Gaza Strip from near the southern city of Sderot on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

Army spokesman Jonathan Conricus said strikes on Gaza would continue as Israel prepares for “multiple scenarios”. Sending ground troops into Gaza was “one scenario” that was not the focus of the current operation, Lieutenant Colonel Conricus said. Air raid warnings went off across Israel, including for the first time in the country’s north.

Israel’s air force said it had launched multiple strikes, targeting what it described as locations linked to the “counterintelligence infrastructure” of Hamas, which controls Gaza, as well as the house of Iyad Tayeb, one of the Islamist movement’s commanders.

In Gaza, 67 people have been killed so far — including 17 children — and nearly 400 injured after days of relentless Israeli airstrikes. Hamas announced the death of its military chief in Gaza City, Bassem Issa, with the Israel Defence Forces saying they had killed three other senior figures.

IDF strikes also destroyed a multi-storey tower housing television channel Al-Aqsa, set up by Hamas.

Israel said about 1500 rockets had been launched into its territory since the beginning of the week by Palestinian militants — 500 of them overnight on Wednesday. Seven people have been killed, including one six-year-old after a rocket struck his home in southern Israel.

The past few days have seen the most intense hostilities in seven years between Israel and Gaza’s armed groups, triggered by weekend unrest at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Coinciding with the bombardments is surging violence between Arabs and Jews inside Israel. On Wednesday night, Israeli far-right groups took to the streets across the country, clashing with security forces and Arab Israelis. Police said they had responded to violent incidents in multiple towns, including Lod, Acre and Haifa.

Israeli television aired footage of a far-right mob beating senseless a man they considered an Arab in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv.

A state of emergency has been declared in the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod, where a synagogue has been torched and an Arab resident shot dead.

In the West Bank, a Palestinian man was killed during a confrontation with Israeli soldiers near the northern city of Nablus.

Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin, in unusually strong language, denounced a “pogrom” in which “an incited and bloodthirsty Arab mob” had injured people and ­attacked sacred Jewish sites.

Mr Netanyahu said Israel was fighting a battle “on two fronts”. “What has been happening these last few days in Israeli towns is unacceptable … Nothing justifies the lynching of Arabs by Jews and nothing justifies the lynching of Jews by Arabs,” he said.

AFP