Israel intercepts rocket fired from Gaza

Israel intercepted a rocket fired from Gaza Wednesday, the army said, in the latest outbreak of unrest that came a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged calm during a visit to the region.

There were no reports of casualties or damage from the launch, which was not immediately claimed by any armed group in the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian territory.

It follows cross-border rocket fire from the Gaza Strip last week in retaliation for a deadly Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, and a shooting attack outside a synagogue in annexed east Jerusalem on Friday that killed seven civilians.

That attack on the Jewish Sabbath was the deadliest targeting Israeli civilians in more than a decade and was celebrated by many Palestinians in Gaza and across the West Bank, where bloodshed is also rising.

Last week, Israeli forces killed 10 people in the Jenin refugee camp in their deadliest raid in the West Bank in nearly two decades. Israel said Islamic Jihad militants were the target of the operation.

Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Islamic Jihad both fired rockets at Israel after Thursday's raid.

Israel then hit Gaza with retaliatory air strikes, and the Palestinian groups vowed further action.

The army on Wednesday said "one rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip" and was "intercepted" by Israel's air defence system.

The Israeli army said sirens sounded in the city of Sderot and other areas close to Gaza.

Blinken left the region late Tuesday after meeting Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

The top US diplomat had urged both sides to take "urgent steps" to restore calm.

Washington has no contact with Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organisation.

The Islamic Jihad said it would send a delegation led by the militant group's leader Ziad al-Nakhala to Cairo on Thursday at Egypt's invitation.

The delegation would meet with head of Egypt's intelligence service to discuss "how to restore calm, especially after the last escalation, including the aggressions against prisoners", said Daoud Shihab, a senior Islamic Jihad member in Gaza.

Earlier Wednesday, firebrand Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir linked between the rocket fire and his move to close two makeshift bakeries operated by Palestinian militants in Israeli prisons, which he said were part of the unwarranted "benefits" that "terrorists" were subject to.

"The launch from Gaza won't weaken my resolve to continue working toward changing the summer-camp conditions of murderous terrorists," he said.

The escalating violence has affected much of the West Bank, including Jericho, a tourist destination near Jerusalem that has remained largely peaceful in recent years.

The regional Palestinian governor on Wednesday accused Israel of putting the area under "siege" following a shooting at a restaurant on Saturday that resulted in no casualties.

"This is the fifth day of the siege on Jericho," governor Jihad Abu al-Assal told AFP.

Israel's army told AFP it had boosted its forces in the area and "inspections were increased at the city's entrances and exits" after "a shooting attack".

An AFP correspondent said cars backed up at entrances to the city, with checks to get in and out of the city often taking hours.

In January, Israeli forces killed 35 Palestinians, including attackers, militants and civilians, while the Friday attack in east Jerusalem killed six Israelis, including a child, and one Ukrainian.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.

Some 235 people died in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last year, with nearly 90 percent of the fatalities on the Palestinian side, according to AFP figures.

The year 2022 was the deadliest in the West Bank since the United Nations started tracking fatalities in the occupied territory in 2005.

At the end of his three-day visit, Blinken said he was leaving senior staff behind in the region, in hopes of implementing "constructive ideas" to stem the fighting, but declined to detail what measures might be advanced.

Blinken warned that Palestinians face "a shrinking horizon of hope, not an expanding one," a trajectory he said needed to "change" in order for the conflict to ease over the long term.