JERUSALEM — Israeli airstrikes hit a militant web site in Gaza on Saturday for the second time in as many days, the Israeli military stated, after Palestinian militants despatched incendiary balloons into Israeli farmland and Palestinian protesters threw stones and explosives at troopers on the separation fence.

There have been no reported casualties from the strikes in Gaza. Earlier Saturday, the Israeli navy shot and wounded three Palestinians who have been rallying on the separation fence alongside the Israeli frontier with the crowded enclave. It’s a well-known tactic for Palestinians in Gaza protesting a 16-year blockade imposed by Israel with Egypt’s assist. Israel says the blockade is required to stop the ruling Hamas militant group from arming itself.

It was the newest in a sequence of violent protests over the previous week that has raised the specter of an escalation for the primary time since a quick spherical of battle final May between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group. It comes at a fraught time, simply earlier than the Sukkot pageant in Israel subsequent week.

During Sukkot, massive numbers of Jews are anticipated to go to Jerusalem’s most delicate holy web site, revered by Jews because the Temple Mount and Muslims because the Noble Sanctuary. The compound, residence to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, is usually a focus for violence.

“Our rebellious youth are expressing their anger at the attempts at religious war being waged against our people in Jerusalem,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem informed native media from the protests, the place tires set alight smoldered behind him.

The Israeli military stated Saturday it had focused a put up belonging to the territory’s militant Hamas rulers close to the separation fence in jap Gaza the place dozens of Palestinians had protested. Hamas-linked media retailers posted photographs of militants sending a barrage of balloons hooked up to incendiary gadgets over the border from jap Khan Younis, one of many greatest cities within the strip.

Militants equally tried to set fires in Israeli farmland surrounding the strip on Friday after one other protest on the perimeter fence left practically three dozen Palestinians wounded by Israeli hearth. Israel additionally responded with a sequence of airstrikes late Friday.

Hamas, which seized management of Gaza in 2007, has described the protests as spontaneously organized by “rebellious youths” in response to Israeli provocations. Israel has opted for a punitive response, barring about 18,000 Palestinian laborers from Gaza from working in Israel, the place they will earn as much as 10 instances as a lot cash as in Gaza.

The exchanges on Friday and Saturday stopped wanting a full-scale escalation. But they underscored the delicate nature of the calm that had pervaded Israel’s border with Gaza for the previous a number of months, at the same time as Israeli-Palestinian violence has surged within the occupied West Bank.

Israel and Hamas have fought 4 wars and engaged in quite a few smaller battles since Hamas took over the territory.

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