The IDF struck targets in the Gaza Strip on Saturday night after a rocket was fired from the Strip into southern Israel earlier in the night, according to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.
A rocket was fired into Israeli territory north of the Gaza Strip on Saturday night, but no interceptors were fired from the Israeli side. The rocket reportedly fell in an open area.
غارات اسرائيلية على موقع للمقاومة غرب خانيونس pic.twitter.com/7zWeVRQcp1
— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency) December 3, 2022
The strikes targeted a workshop for producing weapons belonging to Hamas. The workshop serves as a central production site for much of the rockets belonging to the terrorist organization. A terrorist tunnel belonging to Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip was hit as well.
During the strikes, a second rocket alert was activated in open areas near the town of Bnei Netzarim near the border with Gaza. The Hamas-affiliated Shabab news network reported that two rockets were fired by Palestinian factions towards southern Israel in response to the strikes. After the second round of rocket fire, the IDF targeted a military position belonging to Hamas.
The Palestinian Donia Al-Watan news site reported that Egyptian intelligence is in intensive communications with the Palestinian factions warning them not to escalate the situation.
Hamas's Al-Qassam Brigades announced that it had fired surface-to-air missiles at Israeli aircraft during the strikes.
خاص صفا | شاهد لحظة إطلاق المقاومة صاروخ اعتراض باتجاه طائرات الاحتلال pic.twitter.com/Ens6wz8z9y
— وكالة صفا (@SafaPs) December 4, 2022
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem responded to the exchange of fire early Sunday morning, stating "The resistance's response to the Zionist aggression on the Gaza Strip, and its direct response to the Zionist bombing, confirms that it will not allow the occupation to change the equations and will continue to defend its people in all its places of presence."
"The Zionist enemy expands its aggression against our people by brutally bombing the Gaza Strip, after its crime yesterday of executing the martyr Ammar Mufleh in Hawara," added Qassem. "This Nazi terrorism and behavior will not stop our people's blazing revolution, and we will continue to support our people's uprising in all places of their presence."
Rocket fire comes after Islamic Jihad commander killed in Jenin
The rocket fire and IDF strikes come just days after the defense establishment reportedly expressed concerns that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist movement would launch rockets in response to the death of one of its senior members in an IDF raid in Jenin.
Mohammed Ayman Saadi, a commander in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's Jenin Brigade, and Naeem Jamal al-Zubaidi, a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, were killed in armed clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian terrorists in Jenin on Thursday morning.
The IDF noted that Saadi was responsible for a series of shooting attacks against Israeli forces, as well as arming terrorists, at the direction of the Islamic Jihad. Zubaidi was also involved in shooting attacks against Israelis.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesman Tariq Ezz El Din warned at the time that “the massacre committed by Israel against our people and our resistance fighters in the Jenin camp at dawn today will not go unnoticed, and this criminal occupier will pay the price for his heinous crime.”