After 48 hours of fighting, Israel appears to have the decisive upper hand in its battle with the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a terrorist group that allegedly planned imminent attacks against Israel when the war began on Friday.
Last Monday, Israel arrested a senior PIJ leader in the West Bank. As PIJ prepared to attack Israel’s border communities in retaliation, Israel launched airstrikes on Friday and killed PIJ leader Taysir al-Jabari. PIJ then fired hundreds of rockets at civilians in Israel.
Over the past two days, PIJ has fired about 600 rockets at Israel, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Of these, about 220 managed to fly to civilian population centers. And about 97% of that was intercepted by the Iron Dome system.
Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes on PIJ targets in Gaza have reportedly been highly successful in what Israel calls Operation Breaking Dawn. The Times of Israel reports that the Israeli military believes it is the… full leadership from PIJ.
There were no Israeli casualties other than injuries related to panic attacks and flights to air raid shelters. Meanwhile, about one in four PIJ missiles failed and landed in Gaza itself, killing Palestinians, including children.
Israel was quick to respond to a Palestinian accusation that it killed several children in an airstrike in Gaza by proving they had been killed by a PIJ missile that failed. International criticism has been muted.
So far, the Hamas terror group, which controls Gaza, has not yet been thrown into the fray. Egypt is reportedly brokering ceasefire negotiations between Israel and the PIJ. If the war ends as it is now, it will be a major victory for Israel and a great loss for the PIJ and for Iran.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday nights from 7pm to 10pm ET (4pm to 7pm PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 US Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential election from a conservative perspective. He is winner of the Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship 2018. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.