JERUSALEM/ AMMAN/DAMASCUS - Israel will reopen its only goods crossing with the blockaded Gaza Strip on Tuesday if calm holds following a ceasefire, a minister said, after closing it July 9 partly over kites carrying firebombs.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned separately, however, that the military was prepared for far more intense strikes in the Gaza Strip if it deems necessary after a severe flare-up of violence on Friday.
UN officials meanwhile said that the Gaza Strip was facing serious fuel shortages affecting hospitals as well as water and sanitation facilities, calling for restrictions to be lifted. Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Sunday spoke of reopening the goods crossing, known as Kerem Shalom.
"If today and tomorrow the situation continues as it was yesterday, then on Tuesday we will allow Kerem Shalom to return to normal activity and the fishing zones will return to the same distances as before," he said.
Lieberman, speaking at the crossing, stressed that calm also meant an end to months of kites and balloons carrying firebombs over the border fence from the Palestinian enclave run by Islamist movement Hamas to burn Israeli farmland.
Israeli authorities say hundreds of fires have been started by the firebombs since April.
A spokesman for Israel's fire service said there were no fires caused by the devices along the Gaza border on Saturday and Sunday. He said there had been an average of around 24 per day in recent weeks.
But on Sunday evening the Israeli military said that one of its aircraft had earlier fired "at a terrorist squad launching arson balloons from the northern Gaza Strip into Israeli territory". There were no reports of casualties.
Meanwhile, Israel has evacuated 800 White Helmets rescuers and their family members threatened by advancing Syrian regime forces to Jordan for resettlement in Britain, Canada and Germany, Amman said Sunday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the operation an "important humanitarian step" and said he ordered it after requests from US President Donald Trump and Canadian premier Justin Trudeau.
Jordan "authorised the United Nations to organise the passage of 800 Syrian citizens through Jordan to be resettled in western countries," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Kayed said.
"The government gave the permission after Britain, Germany and Canada made a legally binding undertaking to resettle them within a specified period of time due to 'a risk to their lives'."
air strike targets Syria mily position
Israel on Sunday launched an air strike on a Syrian regime military target in the west of the country, Syrian state media reported. "One of our military positions in Masyaf was the target of an Israeli air aggression," Syria's official news agency SANA said quoting a military source.It was the fourth time this month that Syria has accused Israel of bombing a military position in the war-wracked country.
An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment on the report.
A war monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also reported the air strike and said it targeted a "workshop supervised by Iranians where surface-to-surface missiles are made".
"Iranian forces and forces from Lebanon's (Shiite) Hezbollah movement are deployed in that sector," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
A government scientific research centre is located in Masyaf and was hit by an Israeli air strike in September 2017.
According to the United States sarin gas was being developed at that centre, a charge denied by the Syrian authorities.
Israel has carried out numerous raids inside Syria since 2017, targeting regime forces and their allies from Iran and Hezbollah.
On July 15 SANA reported that Israeli missiles had hit near a strategic air base in the north of the country but said there were no casualties.
According to the Observatory nine pro-regime fighters, including three foreigners, were killed in the mid-July raid.