JERUSALEM: An Israeli and three Palestinians were wounded on Wednesday in the first exchange of fire in months on the Gaza frontier.
The violence came as Israel announced measures aimed at improving living conditions in the occupied West Bank after a rare meeting of top officials.
Israel has announced a number of measures in recent months it says are aimed at easing tensions, but they have had little visible impact on the ground, where attacks by both Israeli settlers and Palestinians are on the rise. There have been no peace talks in more than a decade.
The Israeli military said a civilian near the security fence was lightly wounded by gunfire from Gaza, and that it responded with tank fire at multiple military positions manned by the Hamas militant group, which has ruled the territory since 2007. The Gaza Health Ministry said three Palestinians were wounded, without saying if they were civilians or fighters.
Earlier, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz approved a series of measures aimed at improving relations with the Palestinians after hosting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at his home in Israel late Tuesday.
It was the first time Abbas met an Israeli official inside the country since 2010. The two discussed security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which administers pockets of the occupied West Bank.
Gantz’s office said he approved “confidence-building measures,” including the transfer of tax payments to the Palestinian Authority, the authorization of hundreds of permits for Palestinian merchants and VIPs, and approving residency status for thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel collects hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes on behalf of the PA as part of the interim peace agreements signed in the 1990s.
The tax transfers are a key source of funding for the cash-strapped Palestinians, but Israel has withheld funds over the PA’s payment of stipends to thousands of families that have had relatives killed, wounded or imprisoned in the conflict. Israel says the payments incentivize terrorism, while the Palestinians say they provide crucial support to needy families.
Israel approved residency for some 9,500 Palestinians. Israel controls the Palestinian population registry, and over the years its policies have left an estimated tens of thousands of Palestinians without legal status, severely limiting their freedom of movement, even within the occupied territories. Israel granted legal status to some 4,000 Palestinians in October.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is opposed to Palestinian statehood. His government has shown no interest in reviving peace talks but has said it wants to reduce tensions by improving living conditions in the West Bank.
Recent months have seen a surge in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, as well as Palestinian attacks on Israelis in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Gantz’s meeting with Abbas — the second in the six months since Bennett’s coalition government took office — drew vocal criticism from Israeli opposition lawmakers, including those from former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, the largest in parliament.
The Palestinians seek an independent state that includes all of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, areas Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
Hamas seized Gaza from Abbas’ forces in 2007, a year after the Islamic militant group won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. Gaza has been under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since then.
The Gaza frontier has been mostly quiet since Israel and Hamas fought an 11-day war in May — their fourth since Hamas took over Gaza. Israel holds Hamas responsible for all attacks emanating from Gaza, even those claimed by other armed groups.
Israel strikes Gaza after gunfire wounds civilian near fence
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Israel strikes Gaza after gunfire wounds civilian near fence

- The violence came as Israel announced measures aimed at improving living conditions in the occupied West Bank
- The Israeli military said a civilian near the security fence was lightly wounded by gunfire from Gaza
Israel anti-government protests flare after dismissal of top security agency chief

“The most dangerous enemy of Israel is Benjamin Netanyahu,” protester Moshe Haaharony
TEL AVIV: Thousands of Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Saturday against the decision by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to dismiss the head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service and resume fighting in Gaza.
Netanyahu said this week he had lost confidence in Ronen Bar, who has led Shin Bet since 2021, and intended to fire him effective April 10, prompting three days of protests.
Israel’s Supreme Court issued an injunction on Friday temporarily freezing the dismissal.
Netanyahu has dismissed accusations the decision was politically motivated, but his critics have accused him of undermining the institutions underpinning Israel’s democracy by seeking Bar’s removal.
Israel returned to war in Gaza this week, shattering a ceasefire that saw the exchange of hostages being held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and brought respite to the battered enclave.
In Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, protesters waved blue and white Israeli flags and called for a deal that would see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.
“The most dangerous enemy of Israel is Benjamin Netanyahu,” protester Moshe Haaharony, 63, told Reuters. “Benjamin Netanyahu, for 20 years, doesn’t care about the country, doesn’t care about the citizens.”
Since the start of the war, there have also been regular protests by families and supporters of hostages seized by Hamas during the October 7 attack that have sometimes echoed the criticisms of the government.
“We are a year and a half later after we had very fierce fighting in Gaza and Hamas is still in power,” protester Erez Berman, 44, told Reuters. “It still has tens of thousands of fighters. So the Israeli government actually failed in getting its own goals out of the war.”
With the resumption of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, the fate of 59 hostages, as many as 24 of whom are still believed to be alive, remains unclear and protesters said a return to war could see them either killed by their captors or accidentally by Israeli bombardments.
“We’re going to do whatever it takes to bring the hostages home,” Ophir Falk, Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser, told Reuters.
“Hamas unfortunately understands military pressure, and only military pressure. In November 2023 we got over 80 hostages out for one reason, military pressure... The only reason they went back to the negotiating table was military pressure. And that’s what we’re doing right now,” Falk said.
US embassy in Israel warns Americans there to be on guard

- “The security environment is complex and can change quickly,” the embassy said
WASHINGTON: The US embassy in Israel on Saturday warned Americans there to avoid large gatherings and be prepared to seek shelter following an escalation of conflict in the country.
“The security environment is complex and can change quickly,” the embassy said in an alert posted on its website. “Be aware of your surroundings.”
The warning came as the Israeli army said it was attacking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in a second wave of strikes, after intercepting rockets fired from across the border earlier in the day.
Israel has also seen a series of large protests in recent days over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to dismiss the head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service.
Lebanon’s Tyre targeted in new Israeli strikes: state media

- The strike on the city of Tyre led to a preliminary toll of four injured
BEIRUT: Lebanese state media reported that four people were injured Saturday in an Israeli strike on the key coastal city of Tyre, as a new wave of attacks hit the country.
“The strike on the city of Tyre led to a preliminary toll of four injured,” the official National News Agency said, adding that Israel also attacked other areas of south and east Lebanon.
Father of the last living American hostage in Gaza hopes Trump can bring his son home

- Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old Israeli-American soldier who grew up in the US, is one of 59 hostages still in Gaza
- Adi Alexander said he thinks Netanyahu wants to bring everybody home, but on his own terms
TEL AVIV: Unlike many families who blame Israel’s government for not getting their loved ones released from captivity in Gaza, Adi Alexander is hesitant to point fingers.
Pragmatic and measured, the father of the last living American being held hostage by Hamas just wants his son to come home.
“I don’t want to get into who came first, the egg or the chicken,” Alexander told AP on Friday from his New Jersey home. Still, with the once-promising ceasefire giving way to renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas, he wonders whether Israel can secure his son’s freedom and is more hopeful about the US’s chances to do it.
Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old Israeli-American soldier who grew up in the US, is one of 59 hostages still in Gaza, more than half of whom are believed to be dead. Last week, Hamas said it would release Edan and the bodies of four other hostages if Israel recommitted to the stalled ceasefire agreement.
Days later, though, Israel launched rockets across Gaza, breaking the two-month-old deal and killing hundreds of Palestinians. The hostilities show no signs of abating, with Israel vowing Friday to advance deeper into Gaza until Hamas releases the remaining hostages.
The return to fighting has inflamed the debate in Israel over the fate of those held captive. Netanyahu has come under mounting domestic pressure, with mass protests over his handling of the hostage crisis. But he also faces demands from his hard-line allies not to accept any deal that falls short of Hamas’ destruction.
A father’s hope
Adi Alexander said he thinks Netanyahu wants to bring everybody home, but on his own terms. He questions Netanyahu’s plans whereas he believes US President Donald Trump’s message is clear: He’s focused on bringing the hostages home. Alexander said he’s counting on the US to bridge the large gap between Israel and Hamas. His message to Trump about his administration’s efforts to free his son and the others: “Just keep this job going.”
Many families of the hostages say Trump has done more for them than Netanyahu, crediting the president with the ceasefire. In December, before taking office, Trump demanded the hostages’ immediate release, saying if they weren’t freed before he was sworn in for his second term there would be “hell to pay.”
Phase one of the deal began weeks later, and saw the release of 25 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight others in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The ceasefire was supposed to remain in place as long as talks on the second phase continued, but Netanyahu balked at entering substantive negotiations.
Instead, he tried to force Hamas to accept a new ceasefire plan put forth by US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff. That plan would have required Hamas to release half its remaining hostages — the militant group’s main bargaining chip — in exchange for a ceasefire extension and a promise to negotiate a lasting truce.
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as called for in the original ceasefire agreement mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
The US engages directly with Hamas
As a soldier, Edan would have been released during the deal’s second phase. But Hamas announced this month that it would release Edan after the White House said it had engaged in “ongoing talks and discussions” with the group — separate from the main negotiations. It is the first known direct engagement between Hamas and the US since the State Department designated it a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
Adi Alexander said Adam Boehler, who’s helping spearhead the Trump administration’s efforts to free the hostages, led those separate talks because phase two was stalled. But he said he didn’t believe Hamas’ claim that it would release his son because it came out of left field and wasn’t being considered as part of the discussions between the group and Boehler.
The anxious father said he speaks with Witkoff and Boehler almost daily and understands the negotiations are ongoing despite the resumption of fighting.
A native of Tenafly, a New Jersey suburb of New York City, Edan moved to Israel in 2022 after high school and enlisted in the military. He was abducted from his base during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war, when Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 others hostage.
The grueling wait
Since Edan’s abduction, there’s been little news about him.
Hamas released a video of him over Thanksgiving weekend in November. His family said it was difficult to watch as he cried and pleaded for help, but it was a relief to see he was alive.
Freed hostages have given the family more news, according to his father. Some said Edan had lost a lot of weight. Others said he’d been an advocate for fellow hostages, standing up for kidnapped Thai workers and telling their captors that the workers weren’t Israeli and should be freed.
Although he knows the resumption of fighting means it will take more time to get his son back, Adi Alexander said he thinks both sides had became too comfortable with the ceasefire and that this was one reason phase two never began. He wants the war to end, and hopes the fighting will be limited and targeted and push everyone back to the table.
“Somebody, I think had to shake this tree to create chaos, and chaos creates opportunities,” he said. “The only objective is to get back to the bargaining table to get those people out.”
King Abdullah II urges UK’s PM Starmer to push for Gaza ceasefire reinstatement

- The British premier thanked King Abdullah for his country’s leadership and work towards a political solution
AMMAN: Jordan’s King Abdullah II called on the international community to take urgent action to halt Israel’s attacks on Gaza and reinstate a ceasefire during a phone call with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday.
The king also urged the need to resume aid deliveries to Gaza, warning of the worsening humanitarian crisis, Jordan News Agency reported.
Reiterating Jordan’s firm opposition to any displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, King Abdullah warned against continued attacks on Palestinians and violations of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.
Discussing Syria, the King Abdullah also reaffirmed Jordan’s support for the Syrian Arab Republic’s unity, sovereignty and stability.
Starmer highlighted his deep concern about the renewed Israeli military action in Gaza and the lack of humanitarian aid to the enclave, a statement from Downing Street said.
The British premier thanked King Abdullah for his country’s leadership and efforts aimed at a political solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis.
He welcomed the Arab plan for Gaza and commended the efforts of Jordan and regional partners in developing it. The leaders agreed to continue urging Israel and Hamas to return to the ceasefire.
Starmer said that the UK remained a strong partner to Jordan and the two leaders agreed to keep in close contact.