GAZA/OCCUPIED AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – The occupying
regime of Israel reopened crossings into Gaza on Monday following an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with the Islamic Jihad that ended the most serious outbreak of fighting around the volatile Palestinian enclave in more than a year.
At least 45 people, including 15 children, were martyred in 56 hours of Zionist brutality that began when Israeli airstrikes hit a senior Islamic Jihad commander, Taysir al-Jabari.
Hundreds more people were wounded and several houses destroyed in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian resistance movement fired more than 1,000 rockets at Zionist targets, sending settlers of southern occupied territories and major cities including Tel Aviv fleeing to shelters.
In a news conference broadcast on the Al Mayadeen following the ceasefire late on Sunday, Islamic Jihad leader Ziad al-Nakhala declared: “This is a victory.”
Fifty-eight Zionist-populated settlements were simultaneously brought under the al-Quds Brigades’ rocket fire,” Nakhala said at a press conference in Tehran.
“The occupiers failed to impose any of their conditions on us,” he said. The Islamic Jihad, on the other hand, conditioned the truce on the release of two of its prisoners, who have been detained by the Israeli regime, he added.
The pair has been named as Bassem al-Saadi, a senior figure in the group’s political wing who was recently arrested in the occupied West Bank, and Khalil Awawdeh.
“The enemy made ending the Islamic Jihad group its battle aim but such a dreaming, delusional goal failed,” he said. “We own the human element, the human miracle that can repair capabilities regardless of how humble they are.”
“The Palestinian nation, especially the Al-Quds Brigades, managed to obtain a great achievement in the face of the Zionist enemy,” Nakhala noted, adding, “I salute the Palestinian nation and its steadfastness.”
“I present this victory to all the peoples, which stood by the Palestinian nation,” Nakhala said.
Aware of the danger of escalating the conflict, the Zionist regime was careful to focus on Islamic Jihad targets to avoid drawing Hamas into the fighting.
Little more than a year after an 11-day war in May 2021 that martyred 250 Gazans and wrecked the fragile economy of the zone, Hamas offered support to its ally as the airstrikes continued.
On Monday, the opening of the crossings allowed fuel trucks in to supply Gaza’s only power plant and increase the availability of electricity, which was down to around eight hours a day.
The human cost in Gaza, a narrow coastal strip where some 2.3 million people live under blockade from both the occupying regime of Israel and Egypt, was nonetheless heavy.
“War, war, every two years,” said Gaza fisherman Jihad Meqdad, 44. “This is not human, there is no morality in this.”
Across the region, the besieged enclave received annunciations of support.
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the Palestinian resistance’s successful defensive operations left Tel Aviv with no other choice than to accept truce.
“I lay emphasis on the bravery that characterized Palestine’s retaliation,” Nasrallah
stated. “If martyr Jabari’s assassination had been left unanswered, the Zionist regime would have kept up its aggression.”
The Hezbollah chief said it was the resistance’s rockets that compelled the Zionist regime to accept truce.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian said the Zionist regime launches “blind attacks against women and children” in order to “cover up the multi-layered crises in the occupied territories,” but the assaults fail every time and further lead to its isolation.
Iran, he said, reiterated its support for an “active resistance that stops the malice of the occupiers”.
Amir-Abdollahian said the ceasefire took effect “because the Zionists only understand the language of force”.