Israeli troops mass outside Gaza Strip as violence escalates further

The Israeli army beefed up its troop deployments around the Gaza Strip on Monday as the militant Hamas movement said it would avenge the deaths of six fighters in Israeli air strikes and Palestinians intensified rocket barrages against southern Israel.
“While last week our message [to Hamas] was that calm would be met with calm, we are now in preparedness for escalation and deterioration,” the army spokesman, Lt-Col Peter Lerner, said.

“Our forces are in a state of forward preparedness with the mission to protect the communities in the south. We’re currently completing a deployment of two brigades and we’ve called up 1,500 reserve troops.”

The escalation of an already tense situation in Israel’s south and in Gaza, where a four-year-old was reported wounded in an Israeli air strike on Monday afternoon, came as recriminations between right and left abounded in Israel after the arrest on Sunday of six Israeli Jews over the killing of a 16-year-old Palestinian.

Police believe the abduction of Mohamed Abu Khdeir, who was burned alive, according to the Palestinian Authority Attorney-General, was a revenge attack for the deaths of three Israeli teens abducted on 12 June. Their corpses were retrieved early last week and they were buried amid national outrage the evening before Abu Khdeir was abducted around 4am in advance of mosque prayers near his house.