Palestinian Resistance Warns against Israeli Aggression on Gaza

TEHRAN (defapress) – Secretary General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Resistance Movement Ziad al-Nakhala warned of consequences in case of any Israeli military aggression on the Gaza Strip.

News ID: 76399

Date: 25 March 2019 - 14:52

“We warn the enemy against any aggression on Gaza,” Nakhala said Monday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there would be a “forceful response” to an early morning rocket, allegedly fired from the Gaza Strip, which hit a home in an area near Tel Aviv, wounding seven people.

“The enemy officials must realize that we will respond to any aggression powerfully,” the Islamic Jihad leader underlined.

The rocket attack destroyed a residential home in the community of Mishmeret, north of the city of Kfar Saba.

Israel’s ambulance service said it treated seven people overall, including two women who were moderately wounded. The others, including two children and an infant, had minor wounds.

Netanyahu, in Washington to meet US President Donald Trump, held emergency consultations with military officials back in Tel Aviv and decided to cut his visit short, cancelling a planned address to the AIPAC conference and meetings with congressional leaders.

“There has been a criminal attack on … Israel and we will respond forcefully,” he said, “In a few hours I will meet with President Trump. I will return to Israel immediately afterward.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday’s incident.

On Sunday, Israeli tanks shelled Gaza after “incendiary balloons” were launched across the fence throughout the evening, the Israeli military said. The day before, Israeli warplanes struck southern Gaza Strip.

Tensions have been running high in Gaza since March 30, when the “Great March of Return” protests started, demanding the right to return for those driven out of their homeland by Israeli aggression.

The clashes in Gaza reached their peak on May 14, the eve of the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day or the Day of Catastrophe, which coincided this year with Washington’s relocation of its embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds.

More than 260 Palestinians have so far been killed and at least 26,000 others wounded in the Gaza clashes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in living standards. Israel has launched three major wars against the enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans each time and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.

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