Israel Sends Reinforcements Near Gaza Amid More Tensions
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - The Israeli regime is sending additional forces to the area around the Gaza Strip as tensions rise following the arrest of a senior Palestinian resistance group in the West Bank this week.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that after evaluating the situation in the region, it decided to add extra soldiers to its Gaza division to "improve the IDF's readiness in the area."
The reinforcement includes artillery, infantry, armored and combat engineering units as well as special forces units, according to the IDF.
On Thursday morning, the Zionist regime's military blocked roads and closed the Erez Crossing, the main passage between Israel and Gaza, for the third consecutive day.
The Israeli authorities said on Wednesday night that road closures along the border with the Gaza Strip will remain in place on Thursday, for the third day in a row.
The closures came amid fears of an imminent attack by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement, after Israeli forces arrested its West Bank leader Bassem Saadi on Monday night.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Israeli military said it was deploying 100 reservist troops and three conscript companies to assist in keeping settlers out of restricted areas under imminent threat of anti-tank guided missile fire or sniper attacks by Islamic Jihad.
Saadi was arrested in the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin along with his son-in-law and aide, Ashraf al-Jada. Another member of the Palestinian resistance movement was killed in a gun battle with Israeli troops.
In response to Saadi’s arrest, the Gaza-based group announced in a statement that it was declaring a state of “alertness” and raising its fighters’ “readiness.”
Over concern that Islamic Jihad might retaliate, the Israeli army closed off roads along the Gaza Strip shortly after Saadi’s arrest.
The tensions were sparked by an Israeli raid in the flashpoint Palestinian city of Jenin in the northern West Bank overnight between Monday and Tuesday, during which a 17-year-old Palestinian boy was killed.
The Israeli regime’s crippling siege of the Gaza Strip for electing the popular resistance movement Hamas has turned the enclave into an open-air prison.
The occupying regime brought the entire enclave under the land, aerial, and naval blockade in June 2007.
As a result of the siege, unemployment levels in Gaza are among the highest in the world.
As many as 1.3 million out of the 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza (62 percent) require food assistance as well, according to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
