GAZA CITY: Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip threatened yesterday to resume suicide bombings inside Israel if the Jewish state carried out any operation in the coastal strip.
“It is our right as an occupied people to defend ourselves from the occupation by all means possible including martyrdom operations,” Ayman Taha, a Hamas spokesman, said.
Abu Obaida, spokesman for Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, also said that all options were open to the group while responding to any Israeli military escalation “including returning to martyrdom operations in the heart of Israel.”
Israeli leaders threatened to launch a large-scale operation in the Gaza Strip as a six-month cease-fire expired Friday, triggering resumption of Palestinian rocket-fire from Gaza and Israeli retaliation.
Islamic Jihad, another armed group, said its fighters in the West Bank were waiting for orders to carry out operations inside Israel. This would not be late in coming if Israel targeted its leaders, the group warned.
Al-Nasser Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committee, said its fighters were ready to strongly respond to any Israeli aggression, stressing that Gazans would not be the only ones who would suffer in the event of an attack.
The warnings came as Israel kicked off a campaign to muster international support for a military offensive to try to halt rocket fire from the impoverished Palestinian territory. Israeli diplomats are meeting with their counterparts and decision-makers abroad as part of the new effort, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.
“People abroad perhaps do not understand the real distress of Israelis in the south who live with the rocket threat. Then you wake up in the morning with an Israeli response and you don’t understand where it came from,” Palmor said.
Israel’s UN envoy was sending a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressing Israel’s concerns, he said.
Ministry officials said the diplomatic moves were meant in part as a pre-emptive step to block a UN Security Council resolution that could interfere with an Israeli operation.
— With input from agencies
