 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we're going to be talking about the recent attacks on Gaza by Israel. Almost a hundred sites were targeted by Israeli air force on Thursday night. To talk more on this we have with us Prashant. So Prashant to begin with, can you tell us more about the aftermath of these strikes and what are the current developments? So first let's look at the context of these strikes. Nearly a hundred sites like you said were attacked in Gaza and this has been one of the biggest attacks in recent times. Although Israel has been mounting a number of attacks, even last weekend I think for three successive days they were air raids. So it's not something new but the scope is definitely a much bigger one. Now Israel claims that these attacks are in response to rockets fired from Gaza at Tel Aviv and this is probably the first time Tel Aviv has been hit by rocket fire since 2014. Now the recent intelligence estimates even by the Israelis indicate that these rockets were fired into Tel Aviv as a result of a mistake. Probably because while maintenance operations were going on, there was some sort of an error and these rockets were fired into Tel Aviv. Even Israeli intelligence officials are claiming this. But nonetheless Israel went ahead and struck nearly a hundred sites in Gaza. At least four people are known to have been injured. So this is actually a massive escalation as far as Israel is concerned based on absolutely no intelligence at all. So it is not that they waited until they found out that who was responsible for the attack and struck because even Hamas and various other organizations have claimed that they were not responsible for this. So this is again fits into a pattern of Israeli disproportionate Israeli responses. So the last couple of weeks we have seen Israel attacking Gaza even when there is even a rocket or balloon moves into Israeli territory and there's no damage. But Israelis continue to attack Gaza mercilessly and this is actually a continuation of the trend. So those are the recent developments. Now we have to wait and see what this might mean for the regional context as a whole because there's a developing incident and it is today that the Israeli cabinet might meet and the Israeli government might actually issue a response. So yeah. In response to these attacks the Israeli right wing has come up with a lot of aggressive statements. So how do you see this in context of the upcoming Israeli elections? So the Israeli elections are scheduled for April 9th and there's been a massive move to the right like we observed over the past couple of months. At a situation where sometimes even Prime Minister Netanyahu who's infamous for his statements seems to appear as a moderate. That is the extent to which the political spectrum in Israel has shifted to the right. So various both allies of Netanyahu as well as his rivals have been really ramping up their aggressive statements. So for instance Naftali Bennett the Education Minister who's an ally has talked has called for a complete destruction of Hamas and even the Blue and White Party which is a rival to Netanyahu has also asked for strong response. So what we might see right now is the utilization of this by all Israeli right wing forces including Netanyahu to kind of portray themselves as the forces which are most aggressive against the Palestinians. And so there is the risk of even harsher responses in the coming days despite the fact that this is not an attack as far as Gaza and Hamas are concerned. And Hamas has actually even indicated that they were in talks with the Egyptians to extend the ceasefire while this attack happened. And so that's why they're saying that they were not involved in this attack. But nonetheless what might happen is that the Israeli right wing might use this as an opportunity to further ramp up attacks. So that's a that's a major threat for the region considering that we have seen a continuous number of attacks like we talked about over the past one year and even with the Great Return March we have seen a lot of that. So as you mentioned the Great Return March you know this is just weeks before the first anniversary of the Great Return March. So how do you see this in context of the Palestinian resistance? So the Palestinians have been mounting a very strong resistance to Israel over the past one year especially. It's been going on for many years but over the past one year we have seen some heroic resistance by the Palestinians. And this is despite the fact that almost all the regional players even some of their former allies have abandoned them. For instance Egypt and Saudi Arabia are all on board Donald Trump's plan to basically destroy the Palestinian state. And what do you call it? Most of the regional allies other forces have actually betrayed them. But the Palestinian people the Palestinian organizations they're mounted a very strong resistance. So I would see these resistance continuing and in fact it would be it would grow as we reach the first anniversary of the Great Return March. And it's also important to remember that the March itself saw a massive amount of violence by Israel where the past year hundreds of people have been killed, thousands have been injured and the situation in Gaza is extremely is extremely critical. The health infrastructure is collapsing, the water network, the sewer networks are collapsing. At the same time the people's resistance has not faded at all. So I would think that the people's resistance would continue and although this week's protests have been postponed temporarily in order to avoid further casualties. I will see that in the coming weeks more and more people would return to the border demanding their rights, demanding the right of return which is already established in various US conventions. Thank you for talking to us on this and as there are more developments we'll keep talking about keep having discussions on this. That's all for now. Thank you for watching NewsClick.