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Violence resumed in Gaza this week after two Israeli troops were shot and injured while on patrol along the border in Gaza, triggering IDF retaliatory airstrikes. At least four Palestinians were killed and dozens of others wounded, including 10 children, three paramedics and a journalist. In the midst of the escalation, Hamas vowed tit-for-tat response.

Rocket sirens were heard once again at the Gaza border communities of Kerem Shalom and Eshkol region.

IDF tanks and helicopters began attacking terrorist targets belonging to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, managing to destroy an Islamic Jihad attack tunnel entering Israel from the southern part of the strip.

"The resistance is always ready to respond to the crimes of the occupation," the Hamas Spokesperosn in Gaza said, while the Islamic Jihad claimed that "We are committed to protecting our people and to deter Israel at all costs and under all circumstances."

Islamic Jihad Deputy Khalil al-Hayya added that "There is no escape but that the occupation will be committed to understandings and to break the siege. The resistance has tools capable of forcing Israel to maintain the understandings reached."

The Islamic Jihad leader Baha Abu al-Ata was invited to Cairo and immediately left Gaza through the Rafah border crossing. Israel has threatened to kill Abu al-Ata more than once, since he is responsible for the launching of many rockets into Israeli territory. Since the beginning of the weekend, five Palestinians have been killed according to Palestinian sources.

Amid the outbreak of violence, Israel closed the Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings into Gaza and suspended all fishing off the Gaza coast. A smaller Palestinian armed group said that one of its fighters was killed in an IDF airstrike, while the Gaza Health Ministry reported at least six people were wounded.

Hamas confirmed they were members of its military wing and pledged to respond to what it called "Israeli aggression." In a threat delivered through social media, the group said that it will respond "to the crimes of the occupation and the killing of our people."

Four Palestinians have been injured in an Israeli airstrike around the town of Beit Hanoun in the north of the Gaza Strip with at least two people killed, including a 22-year-old man, a one-year-old baby and several injured after Israel's military responded with force. [O]n the Israeli side of the border, an 80-year-old woman was severely wounded in a Palestinian strike on the city of Kiryat Gat.

© REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

© REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Smoke and debris rises following an explosion on the Gaza side of the Israel-Gaza border, seen from the Israeli side May 4, 2019.

© REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Smoke rises during Israeli air strikes in the southern Gaza Strip May 4, 2019.

The military wing of the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad terror group on Saturday released a video threatening rocket attacks on the nuclear facility in Dimona and other sensitive sites in Israel, amid continuous rocket fire from the enclave and IDF strikes in response.

The release of the video, which shows members of the Iran-backed group loading projectiles into a rocket launcher, comes amid a round of fighting between Israel and terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

In addition to the Dimona reactor, the video also shows footage of Ben Gurion Airport, the Ashdod port and refineries in the northern city of Haifa.

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Washington has also revoked two waivers allowing Iran to send its excess heavy water to Oman and to export excess enriched uranium, a practice it used to remain within the strict limits of the JCPOA. In turn, Tehran received from its trade partners "yellowcake" uranium, a type of the radioactive element with a much lower concentration than enriched fuel.

"We are tightening restrictions on Iran's nuclear program as part of our pressure campaign," US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook told Bloomberg.

Two of the three facilities given waivers have relationships with foreign countries; the heavy water reactor at Arak is being redesigned with Chinese help, according to the JCPOA; the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant was built with help from the Soviet Union, and today Russia supplies enriched uranium for the plant and takes away its spent fuel rods. The third site, Fordow, is a uranium enrichment facility. Its inclusion in the waivers has drawn heavy criticism because of the potential for the facility to be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, which is derived from uranium.

While US President Donald Trump and hawkish associates such as National Security Adviser John Bolton have pressed for a total cessation of all Iranian nuclear fuel refinement, the US State Department is forced to navigate a difficult and narrow path between, on the one hand, constraining Iranian production so as to avoid the perceived danger of an Iranian nuclear program, and on the other, pushing Tehran into such a desperate situation that it departs from all cooperation with the JCPOA powers and resumes its pre-2015 activities - something it's threatened to do more than once in the last year.

"Our leadership is not comfortable with any mechanism that allows uranium enrichment," Ford said. "We don't want to give Iran a supposed excuse to continue to enrich."

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Iran must boost non-oil revenues & oil sales to counter US sanctions 'plot' - Rouhani

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called for resistance against US restrictions on its energy sector by boosting production and exports, as Washington tightens its sanctions grip on Tehran.

"America is trying to decrease our foreign reserves... We have to increase our foreign exchange earnings and cut our currency expenditures," the Iranian leader stated on Saturday as cited by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

Rouhani said Iran has managed to reduce some imports and become self-sufficient with products and commodities, like wheat gasoline, and now can export them. Last year, the country's non-oil exports stood at $43 billion, according to the president.

"We should increase production and raise our (non-oil) exports and resist America's plots against the sale of our oil," he added.

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