Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday said the resistance movement intends to respond to the deaths of seven Gaza fighters Monday after the Zionist army blew up an attack tunnel that stretched into the occupied territory.
“I assure the leadership of [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad: blood for blood, destruction for destruction,” said Haniyeh, speaking at the crowded funeral for those who died in the tunnel, which was built and controlled by the PIJ resistance movement.
Five of the martyrs belonged to PIJ, two of whom were senior leaders, while two members of Hamas’s military wing were also killed during a rescue operation in the exploded tunnel, according to the group.
While Haniyeh vowed to attack the Zionist entity, he stressed that Hamas’s immediate response would be to quicken his party’s reconciliation efforts with the Fatah party, which controls the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas’s deputy leader in Gaza, Khalil Hayya, also speaking at the funeral, stressed the resistance movement would wait for a strategic time to respond.
“We are a prudent resistance that knows how to manage its conflict with the enemy. [We] know how to avenge and to strike in the specific place and time that will hurt the enemy,” he said.
Hamas considered that the Zionists were stirring up chaos in Gaza through the demolition of the tunnel in order to foil the ongoing reconciliation talks.
In the same context, Fatah spokesperson and vice chairman of the party’s revolutionary council Fayez Abu Eita stressed that the detonation of the tunnel by the Israeli occupation army was aimed at disrupting the unity talks.
“This crime comes in the context of [sowing confusion] and creating tension in order to thwart Palestinian national reconciliation,” Abu Eita said in a statement carried in the official PA news outlet Wafa on Monday night.
Senior Islamic Jihad leader Khaled al-Batash on Monday vowed that “all our options are open” for a response, but added his group “will take all considerations into account.”
The Zionist occupation military chief Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot on Tuesday warned the resistance groups in the Gaza Strip to refrain from retaliating against the army’s destruction of an attack tunnel.
Any response will be answered with determination and in a forceful and clear way, as we did yesterday, the occupation army chief said, during a meeting with senior officers near the Gaza border.
Source: Websites
