A ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip appeared to be holding on Friday, but there have been tensions in occupied East Jerusalem where Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and fired tear gas at Palestinians after Friday prayers.
Witnesses inside the compound said that after Friday prayers many Palestinians stayed at the premises to celebrate the ceasefire between Hamas and the Israeli government.
“They were singing and chanting when a contingent of the Israeli police [stationed] next to the compound came into the compound and started using crowd control measures that they use all the time, including stun grenades, smoke bombs and tear gas,” Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said.
“They started firing in that crowd in an effort to try and disperse them.”
The attacks wounded some 20 people, according to a written statement by the Palestinian Red Crescent. Two of the injured were taken to a nearby hospital, the group said.
The Egyptian-brokered ceasefire came into effect in the early hours of Friday after 11 days of relentless Israeli bombing of the besieged enclave and thousands of rockets launched into Israel by Hamas, the group ruling the coastal strip.
A delegation from Egyptian intelligence reached Gaza just hours after a ceasefire was announced between Palestinian resistance groups and Israel.
A Palestinian source told Anadolu Agency that the Egyptian delegation entered Gaza via the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing with Israel to meet with leaders from Hamas in order to follow up the ceasefire commitments.
The delegation was headed by Ahmed Abdel Khaleq, a top Egyptian intelligence officer responsible for the occupied Palestinian territories.
Thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank poured onto the streets to celebrate the ceasefire, waving flags and flashing the “V” sign for victory.
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza killed at least 243 Palestinians, including 66 children, and brought widespread devastation to the already impoverished territory. On the Israeli side, 12 people, including two children, were killed.
Rescue workers pulled the bodies of nine Palestinians including a child, from under the rubble in Gaza, local media said.
Eight of them were retrieved from under the debris of their houses in al-Qarara area, northeast of Khan Younis city, while the three-year-old girl was found under the ruins of her family house in Tal al-Hawa, south of Gaza City.
Separately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hamas against any further rocket attacks following a ceasefire.
In a speech hours after the truce took effect, he said, “If Hamas thinks we will tolerate a drizzle of rockets, it is wrong.” He promised to respond with “a new level of force against any expression of aggression against communities around Gaza and any other part of Israel”.
Netanyahu also hailed Israel’s 11-day bombardment of Gaza as “an exceptional success”.
On the other hand, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey will continue to show the world how the map of Palestine has changed since the start of the Israeli occupation.
“The whole world should know what this terror state of Israel is,” Erdogan said at the opening ceremony of the seventh section of the North Marmara Motorway.
Highlighting Thursday’s United Nations General Assembly meeting on the crisis, Erdogan said a “successful session” was held under the presidency of Volkan Bozkir, a Turkish diplomat, and with the attendance of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, as well as other foreign ministers who stand together on the issue.
“They talked about how Palestine was occupied by this terror state of Israel since 1947, and was turned into a (small) piece of land today,” Erdogan said.