“Hamas has largely maintained a truce with Israel since a brief war in late 2012, but it has sometimes struggled to rein in smaller armed Islamist factions hostile to the Israel.” Actually, the opposite is true. Ramadan Shalah of Islamic Jihad recently said of his group and Hamas: “We both coordinate all our moves together, in war and peace. I’ll reveal something: Just days ago, I was the guest [in Qatar] of Abou Alwalid [Khaled Meshaal], and we held very detailed meetings to discuss almost everything, but mainly the resistance and the situation in Gaza, so whoever says there’s no coordination knows nothing. We agreed together on retaliating if there’s any attack.”
“Gaza rockets hit south Israel, army strikes back: officials,” Reuters, April 21 (thanks to Kenneth):
GAZA (Reuters) – Seven rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel during the Jewish Passover holiday on Monday, drawing retaliatory air strikes from the Israeli army, officials said, the first cross-border clash in several weeks.
Israel’s army said its strikes hit two training camps run by Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls Gaza. Medical sources there said two Hamas militants were lightly wounded.
Hamas has largely maintained a truce with Israel since a brief war in late 2012, but it has sometimes struggled to rein in smaller armed Islamist factions hostile to the Israel.
There was no claim of responsibility for the latest rocket salvo from any of those factions, who are opposed to troubled peace talks between their Palestinian rivals in the occupied West Bank and Israel.
Two of the projectiles from Gaza exploded in the southern Israeli border community of Sderot in a road and an open area, Israeli police said. There were no reports of any injuries.
Israel holds Hamas responsible for any rocket fire from the Strip and routinely retaliates against it.
“Israeli civilians celebrating the Passover Holiday woke up this morning to the sound of Code-Red alarms and rockets … Hamas rocket terrorism is an intolerable reality Israelis should not have to accept,” Israeli army spokesman Peter Lerner said in a statement….