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‘Serious mistake’ – Sderot mayor slams ceasefire after 12 wounded, property destroyed in massive attacks

Sderot mayor angry about ceasefire, says that residents of his city ‘will pay the price’ this summer for ‘lax’ Israeli response.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

After Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists in the Gaza Strip launched more than 100 rockets towards civilian communities in southern Israel in a one day span, the IDF announced that it had reached a ceasefire with the terror groups that rule over the coastal enclave.

The truce was brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the UN.

At least 12 people in Israel were wounded by the onslaught, with one foreign national seriously wounded and two others in moderate condition after a rocket struck the construction site where they were working on Tuesday afternoon.

The latest flare-up of violence came after a senior Islamic Jihad commander, Khader Adnan, died in an Israeli prison following a nearly three-month-long hunger strike.

Casualties on the Gazan side have not been made public, with some Palestinian news outlets reporting that a Hamas terrorist was badly wounded in a retaliatory Israeli airstrike on a rocket-manufacturing facility. The terror group has refused to confirm any injuries or deaths among its operatives.

Despite the truce silencing the wail of rocket sirens that kept residents of Israel’s Negev communities huddled in rocket shelters for most of the past day and night, some local lawmakers were angry about the ceasefire.

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Alon Davidi, the mayor of Sderot, a city near the Strip which has been the frequent target of bombings, said that the truce encourages terror and that Israel’s response to the rocket fire had not been decisive enough.

“This is a serious mistake,” Davidi said to Ynet, speaking about the ceasefire. “There is a war going on between the Gaza Strip and Sderot, and the government is adopting a policy in which it lets terrorists off the hook and protects the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This policy is too lax, and we will pay a price for it this summer.

“It’s funny that the terrorists shoot to kill us, yet the government ties the hands of the IDF and does not allow them to harm the terrorists themselves,” he added, referring to calls for the Israeli government to assassinate leaders of terror groups, rather than their assets such as rocket launching or weapons storage sites.

“The terrorist commanders need to be eliminated, but it seems like they signed an under-the-table agreement that the IDF won’t kill them.”

The Otzma Yehudit party, headed by Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, announced that they would be skipping parliamentary votes in the Knesset on Wednesday in protest of the coalition’s “weak response in Gaza.”