The leaders of the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups vowed on Monday to retaliate against Israel for continuing attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The decision to carry out retaliatory attacks was taken at a joint meeting of both groups chaired by Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, and Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, the leader of Islamic Jihad, according to a statement faxed to The Associated Press in Beirut.
“The participants discussed the ongoing treacherous Zionist aggression on our Palestinian people in the towns of Rafah and Jenin and their camps,” the statement said.
Officials from both groups, which have carried out scores of deadly suicide attacks against Israelis, also discussed Israel’s October 5 attack “on sisterly Syria for the alleged presence of an Islamic Jihad training camp in it”.
“The two movements agreed to confront the Zionist aggression on our people in Palestine and to urge all [Palestinian] factions and resistance forces to coordinate among each other to confront this aggression,” the statement said.
It did not say where or when the meeting occurred.
Both Mashaal and Shallah are based in Syria, which has closed the offices of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Damascus-based radical Palestinian groups following pressure from Washington, which brands the groups as terrorist.
The groups’ leaders have gone to ground and often travel to neighbouring Lebanon, over which Syria wields great influence, to make statements and conduct media interviews.
The Hamas and Islamic Jihad statement followed Israeli airstrikes on Monday in Gaza that killed two Hamas activists and a bystander.
At least 23 people, including four children and a 70-year-old woman, were wounded, Palestinian hospital officials said.
The airstrikes came a day after Palestinian militants fired homemade rockets into southern Israel from Gaza. Also on Sunday, a Palestinian ambush in the West Bank killed three Israeli soldiers and wounded a fourth.
In the last three years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, Israel has killed dozens of Palestinian militants in targeted attacks, including helicopter missile strikes.
An Islamic Jihad suicide bombing that killed 20 people in Haifa, Israel, triggered Israel’s airstrike in Syria. Israel said the target was an Islamic Jihad training camp. Syria and Islamic Jihad said the base had been abandoned long ago. — Sapa-AP
Gaza strike kills three