BREAKING NEWS

Netanyahu: Gaza terror leaders know Israel can target them anywhere

Israel's decision to use targeted assassinations against Islamic Jihad leaders has created a new deterrence against Gaza violence, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told regional councils heads from Gaza border communities on Wednesday.
"Leaders of the terrorist organizations, commanders and activists know that they have become targets and that at any moment we can act against them in any space. They understand this message well," Netanyahu said.
He spoke a day after the IDF's targeted killing of Islamic Jihad leader, Bahaa Abu al-Ata. 
The Arab press has reported that Israel had conveyed a message via the United Nations to Islamic Jihad that it was prepared to assassinate its leaders in Syria if the rocket fire did not immediately cease. The UN has not yet responded to this report.
Netanyahu told the leaders of the Gaza border communities that the terror organizations had not imagined that Israel would take this step.  "We executed the [military] operation with surgical precision," Netanyahu said.
"Every terrorist and commander knows that we can reach him personally," Netanyahu said.
He explained that terror organizations have used the civilian population in Gaza as human shields while they attack Israel. The IDF, he said, has now thwarted that practice by targeting al-Ata as he hid.