The Israeli army announced an increased presence in the West Bank and near Gaza on Wednesday evening, as U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial peace plan sparked outrage among Palestinians.

Airstrikes

Israeli fighter jets carried out several airstrikes late on Wednesday night on military sites and facilities in the Gaza Strip in response to an earlier rocket attack, security sources said.

The sources said that at least two successive airstrikes were carried out in southern and northern Gaza Strip, adding the Israeli warplanes hovered over Gaza and several explosions were heard. No injuries were reported.

The Israeli aerial attack was carried out a few hours after unknown militants fired a rocket into southern Israel from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. The rocket has not caused any injuries or damage, according to Israeli media reports.

No one claimed responsibility for the rocket attack. The Israeli army held the Hamas movement, which has been ruling the Gaza Strip since 2007 responsible for attacks carried out from the enclave.

Earlier, Israel's hawkish defense minister Naftali Bennett, called on for Israel to establish sovereignty over nearly a third of the occupied West Bank, acting on U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of a Middle East peace plan that Palestinians branded apartheid.

"Last night history knocked on the door of our home and gave us a one-time opportunity to apply Israeli law on all settlements in Samaria, Judea, the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea," Bennett said, using the Hebrew names for areas in the West Bank occupied by Israel.

He had ordered a team to be set up to apply Israeli law and sovereignty on all Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

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It was unclear whether the present caretaker government had a legal mandate to carry out such a move after two inconclusive elections in 2019. Bennett is vying with Netanyahu for support from right-wing voters in an election set for March 2.

The plan which proposes a "realistic" two-state solution is seen as overwhelmingly supportive of Israeli goals and drafted with no Palestinian input, gives the Jewish state a U.S. green light to annex key parts of the occupied West Bank.

It was widely cheered in Israel, but sparked fury among Palestinians, with protests breaking out in the West Bank and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, from which rocket fire was reported Wednesday evening by the Israeli army.

Strong opposition from Palestine

The 80-page plan is expected to be voted by the United Nations Security Council in the next two weeks.

"We believe that the Trump plan, (or) the Trump-(Benjamin) Netanyahu plan, which is an attempt to destroy the national rights of the Palestinian people, will fail," Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York.

"We will try our best with our friends to have the strongest possible draft resolution and to receive the strongest and largest possible voting in favor of that resolution," he added.

According to him, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would address and also vote on the draft. "Of course we would like to see a strong, large opposition to this Trump plan," he said with Tunisian UN Ambassador Moncef Baati, currently serving a two-year term on the Security Council, standing beside him.

Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli security forces clashed in various locations in the West Bank and further Palestinian protests are expected in the coming days.

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Controversial plan

Trump, who unveiled the peace plan on Tuesday at the White House alongside Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with no Palestinian representatives present, said his initiative could succeed where others had failed.

But the plan grants Israel much of what it has sought in decades of international diplomacy, namely control over Jerusalem as its "undivided" capital, rather than a city to share with the Palestinians.

It also offers U.S. approval for Israel to annex the strategically crucial Jordan Valley, which accounts for around 30 percent of the West Bank, as well as other Jewish settlements in the territory.

Hamas said it could never accept anything short of Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the Palestinians to "come up with a counter-offer."

(With input from AFP, Reuters)