GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – As the fragile ceasefire between the Zionist regime and the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas continues to hold, the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad Ziyad al-Nakhalah has issued a stern warning against the Zionist regime.
“The assassination of any of our commanders or soldiers, wherever it is, will lead us to respond immediately by bombing Tel Aviv,” stated al-Nakhalah.
The remarks came as the regime has carried out targeted killing operations against several such senior figures in the past, and has threatened another assassination.
The regime suffered a heavy defeat in the face of Gaza’s resistance groups during an 11-day aggression it launched on the coastal sliver of land.
The resistance fired over 4,000 rockets towards the occupied territories right after the regime launched the assault, forcing Tel Aviv to accept a ceasefire last Friday.
Nakhaleh said, “We triumphed against the vicious enemy, and are currently much stronger than what some may think.”
The resistance groups would keep confronting the regime “until achieving ultimate victory,” he added, referring to the movements’ commitment to the Palestinian cause of liberation from the regime’s occupation and aggression.
Nakhaleh said Operation Sword of al-Quds, as the resistance’s recent successful retaliation has been named, was an operation of national scale that sought to resolve the Palestinian plight.
He, therefore, said continued struggle was the sole way out of the situation the Palestinian nation faces with, and roundly rejected any form of “coexistence with the Zionist regime.”
Meanwhile, a former Zionist officer said the regime’s army is not ready for a regional war due to its defeat in the latest confrontation with Palestinian resistance movements in the Gaza Strip.
“This month, Israelis witnessed a horrific scenario, where the belief of the victory of the Air Force in any war was completely destroyed,” Yitzhak Brik told Haaretz on Saturday, according to the North press agency.
Brik stressed that after the war on Gaza, the security and political leadership of the Zionist regime must not depict a “victory image” to the people in the occupied territories.
“Israeli leaders must return to their senses and immediately meet in a dialogue session to make decisions to prepare the army to confront a multi-front war and shape a modern security belief,” he said.
An official with the regime’s spy agency also confirmed that Hamas’ rockets are launched from locations throughout the Gaza Strip, with each rocket being enough to trigger the warning sirens in an entire Israeli-occupied town.
“The launching [of rockets] was carried out in a number of ways, but it is based on a policy of intensity of fire determined directly by Mohammed Deif (commander of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which is the military wing of Hamas),” the unnamed official told Israel’s Channel 12, according to the Arabic-language Safa news agency.
The official stated that Hamas still possesses “hundreds of long-range missiles” after the war.