Alwaght- Palestinian Hamas movement leader Ismail Haniyah on Tuesday said the resistance movement intends to respond to the Israeli regime's killing of seven Gazan fighters.
"I assure the leadership of [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad: blood for blood, destruction for destruction,” said Haniyah, speaking at the crowded funeral for those who died in Israeli regime's airstrike on a tunnel, which was built and controlled by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) resistance movement.
Five of the victims belonged to PIJ, two of whom were senior leaders, while two members of Hamas’s military wing were killed during a rescue operation in the exploded tunnel, according to the group.
While Haniyah vowed to retaliate Israelis aggression, he stressed that Hamas’s immediate response would be to quicken his party’s reconciliation efforts with the Fatah party, which controls the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas’s deputy leader in Gaza, Khalil Hayya, also speaking at the funeral, stressed the resistance movement would wait for a strategic time to respond.
"We are a prudent resistance that knows how to manage its conflict with the enemy. [We] know how to avenge and to strike in the specific place and time that will hurt the enemy,” he said.
Hamas considered that the Zionists were stirring up chaos in Gaza through the demolition of the tunnel in order to foil the ongoing reconciliation talks.
Senior PJI leader Khaled al-Batash vowed on Monday “all our options are open” for a response, but added his group “will take all considerations into account.”
The Israeli regime's military chief Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot on Tuesday warned the resistance groups in the Gaza Strip to refrain from retaliating against the army’s destruction of the tunnel.
Any response will be answered with determination and in a forceful and clear way, as we did yesterday, the occupation army chief said, during a meeting with senior officers near the Gaza border.
