A group consisting of various Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s rocket attacks against Israel.
The group, called the Joint Room of the Palestinian Resistance Factions, said the rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip were in response to the Israeli assassination of three senior Islamic Jihad officials.
Jihad al-Ghannam, Khalil al-Bahtini and Tareq Izz al-Din were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday morning. Another 10 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed in the airstrikes.
“With the help and power of God Almighty, the Joint Room of the Palestinian Resistance Factions announces the implementation of Operation Revenge of the Free, which consisted of directing a large missile strike with hundreds of missiles on the enemy’s sites, settlements and targets,” the group said in a statement hours after the first rockets were fired into Israel.
“Targeting civilian homes, assaulting our people and assassinating our men and heroes is a redline that will be confronted with all force,” it said.
Israel “will pay dearly,” it added.
The group said the armed factions were “ready for all options.”
“If the occupation persists in its aggression and arrogance, black days await it,” it said. “The resistance on all fronts of the homeland will remain united as a sword and a shield for our people, our land and our holy sites.”
PIJ's rocket barrage carried out in coordination with Hamas
The rocket attacks were carried out in coordination between Hamas and Islamic Jihad, sources in the Gaza Strip said.
Hamas did not want to claim responsibility alone for the attacks and preferred to do so through the group representing several factions, according to the sources.
“Hamas wants to make it appear as if the decision to fire the rockets was taken by a number of factions and not one group,” one of the sources said. “But it’s worth noting that the attacks could not have taken place without a green light from the Hamas leadership.”
Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif Qanou said the “unified strikes” against Israel were part of the response to the “massacre” perpetrated by the “Zionist occupation.” The rocket attacks also came within the framework of “defending” the Palestinian people, he added.
Qanou said Israel would bear responsibility for “the consequences of expanding its aggression” against the Palestinians. Israel would continue to pay the price for its “idiocy and ongoing aggression, which will lead to an explosion,” he added.
Islamic Jihad official Daoud Shehab hinted that his group had received permission from Hamas to fire the rockets at Israel. The “agreement” among the Palestinian factions on the response to Tuesday’s Israeli airstrikes refutes the claim that Hamas does not want to be involved in the attacks on Israel, he said.
“The occupation government and its army alone bear responsibility for the escalation,” Shehab said.