Some 9,000 Palestinians rioted near the Israel-Gaza Strip border on Friday, setting tires on fire and throwing firebombs and explosives at Israeli troops, which responded with crowd control measures and sporadic live fire.
Gaza's Health Ministry said two people, including a paramedic, were killed by Israeli fire near the border. According to Palestinian media reports 70 people were wounded in border clashes Friday.
The clash came as Hamas and Israel appeared to be honoring a truce that ended two days of intense violence last week, amid efforts by neighboring Egypt to negotiate a long-term cease-fire between the two parties.
Incendiary kites and balloons sent over the Gaza border into Israel as part of the Palestinians' arson campaign sparked 14 fires over the weekend. One balloon hit a power line in Kibbutz Sufa, about 1.5 miles for Gaza, causing a power outage in the area for several hours.
So far, some 10,000 acres of forest and farmland have been reduced to ash by the Palestinians' three-month arson terrorism campaign. Environmental experts say it would take some 15 years to rehabilitate the damage caused to the area.
The Israeli Air Force struck a terrorist cell gearing up to send incendiary balloons over the border and IDF tanks shelled several Hamas positions in response to the weekend's violence.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted in closed-doors meeting last week that he had no intention of going to war over incendiary kites. He explained that while Israel will mount the proper response to any escalation on the Gaza border, its main focus must remain the Iranian threat, especially the Islamic republic's attempts to entrench itself military in Syria.
Several Diplomatic-Security Cabinet members, however, said over the weekend that another conflict between Israel and Hamas was just a matter of time.
They noted that the restraint the IDF has shown in dealing with the flare-ups in violence over the past few weeks has eroded Israeli deterrence opposite Hamas, leading the Islamist terrorist group to believe Israel was willing to tolerate rocket fire on its south.
A wide-scale military campaign in Gaza may prove necessary to regenerate deterrence vis-à-vis Hamas and the other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip, they said.
On Saturday evening, hundreds of Gaza-vicinity communities' residents demonstrated in Tel Aviv against what they called the government's failure to deal with the security situation on the border.
Protested waved signs reading, "Security is a basic right," "I have no other country," "We're not cannon fodder," and "No truce when the south is on fire."
At some point, demonstrators released a few kites to which fireworks were attached. Later, they played a recording of the Color Red rocket warning alert and laid face down on the road, temporarily blocking traffic in one of the city's major intersections.
"We're tired of feeling like third-class citizens," said Odelia Ben-Yakir of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, 1 mile from the Gaza Strip.
"We're tired of the government not managing this situation and being dragged along by Hamas. It's unthinkable that we're letting a terrorist group run things," she said.
