Home Front Command relaxes restrictions after ceasefire

The Home Front Command relaxed restrictions on southern Israel on Saturday night two hours after a ceasefire between the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Israel reportedly took effect.

According to the new guidelines, gatherings in open areas of more than 10 people and in buildings of more than 100 people will be banned in communities near the Gaza border from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m. Additionally, in that time period, only workplaces with a shelter nearby will be able to open and classes will only take place within shelters.

Ishai Trabelsi can’t fit his family of seven in one small safe room, with space for only four beds.

“When rockets fall, we don’t sleep,” he said as he stood in the protected space in his Sderot home.

A cheerful Mickey Mouse was painted on the wall and a stuffed tiger was tucked into the corner of one of the beds, but his family is absent.

When the sirens rang across the southern border city this week to warn of incoming rockets launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Trabelsi, his wife and five children relocated to her parent's home near Ashdod to get out of the line of fire.

One person was killed and eight others were injured after an apartment building in Rehovot suffered a direct hit in a wave of rockets fired shortly after 6 p.m. on Thursday evening.

One person was killed after he was trapped under the rubble of the damaged building, and eight people received medical treatment on the scene after sustaining light injuries as a result of the direct missile hit. One of the injured is a woman in her 60s who is suffering from a head injury, United Hatzalah has confirmed.

"It was a very difficult scene with a lot of destruction," United Hatzalah Rehovot branch head Yoni Rottenberg recounted. "Unfortunately, the death of one of the injured was pronounced at the scene as a result of the rocket hit.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad had fired 803 rockets into Israel between Wednesday morning and 8 p.m. on Thursday evening, and the IDF had undertaken 191 airstrikes in Gaza in the same timeframe.

The IDF killed Islamic Jihad rocket commander Ali Ghali around 1:00 a.m. early Thursday, and his deputy, Ahmed Abu Daka, around 4:30 p.m. on Thursday.

As of Thursday night, Hamas continued to say it was running a joint operations room with Islamic Jihad, but IDF intelligence maintained its position that Hamas was overwhelmingly staying out of the fighting.

Israel will respond strongly to the rocket attack that killed one in Rehovot, a diplomatic source said on Thursday. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant planned to hold a situation assessment following the attack. 

As of Thursday evening, ceasefire talks are “in a low gear,” a diplomatic source said, compared to the previous night when a ceasefire seemed very close.

The Iron Dome is ready for anything rockets and mortars that Gaza terror groups try to fire at Israel, IDF Capt. Assaf told the Jerusalem Post in an interview in the middle of the current conflict.

Capt. Assaf, whose last name is classified, said, “we are in a round of war with Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. They are firing rockets at the Gaza corridor and Gush Dan. We are confronting this and we know how to do to-notch work. We are shooting down all of the rockets in the area.”

Assaf was asked if there were any technical failures this week with Iron Dome, like there had been briefly last week during a different round of rockets from Islamic Jihad.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) organization may have lost some of its top military commanders during the latest round of fighting with Israel, but its status as the second-largest armed group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas remains intact.

In fact, some Palestinians believe that each round of fighting with Israel props up PIJ’s standing as a dominant player not only in the Gaza Strip, but in the West Bank as well.

In the past year, PIJ has managed to form several armed cells in the northern West Bank, specifically Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarem, turning it into a major actor in the Palestinian arena much to the dismay of Hamas and other factions.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi conducted a situational assessment at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem on Thursday.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that the defense establishment was preparing for the possibility that the rocket fire targeting Israel would expand as Operation Shield and Arrow entered its third day on Thursday.

Galant made the comments after holding a briefing with IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.

"I expressed my appreciation to the IDF and Shin Bet for the precise targeting tonight of the head of the Islamic Jihad rocket array," said Galant. "I instructed all the security forces to take all the necessary measures to prepare a series of additional operations, and to maintain a high level of readiness and vigilance for the possibility of an expansion of the circle of fire."

A senior defense source on Thursday denied that Israel has ever agreed to cease targeted killings against Islamic Jihad as part of ceasefire talks over the current conflict with Gaza.

By late afternoon Wednesday, there was an avalanche of media leaks that a ceasefire had been agreed to and would go into effect at 9:00 p.m.

Even after Islamic Jihad increased its rate of rocket fire in the hours closing in on 9:00 p.m., many commentators said this was just part of the terror group trying to get in its last shots before the ceasefire deadline in order to look tough.

However, Islamic Jihad kept firing rockets until nearly midnight.