Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas threatened Wednesday to resume intense fighting opposed to Israel if the Jewish state “violated” the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Jerusalem Temple Mount and minimized its army’s infrastructure following the 11-day clash in the Gaza Strip.
“What happened is just an exercise in figuring out what will happen if Israel violates the Al-Aqsa mosque,” Gaza’s leader Yahya Sinwar said Wednesday, days after a ceasefire came into effect. “The profession will have to know: Al-Aqsa has men who will protect her. “
Violent clashes between the Palestinian faithful and Israeli police at Jerusalem’s holy site in early May preceded the bombing of Hamas rockets against Israeli towns and villages that triggered the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The Hamas leader also said he would like Israel to kill him in an attack.
“The greatest gift Israel can give me is murder,” he said, “I would die a martyr of an F-16 than from a coronavirus or [other] disease. “
In an interview with The Associated Press, Sinwar said 80 members had died in the 11-day war with Israel that ended last week, offering the organization’s first official loss count in combat. armed arm of the organization, 22 members of the smallest organization of Islamic Jihad and member of a small organization called Popular Resistance Committees.
The Hamas-led Ministry of Health in Gaza estimated the number of Palestinians killed in the fighting in 254, adding 66 children, 39 women and 17 others over the age of 60. It does not distinguish between members of the terrorist organization and civilians and ha The Israeli army maintained that it had killed some 225 terrorists and that the number of Palestinian deaths was in fact significantly higher than had been reported.
Israel says civilian casualties are unintentional and that the military makes wonderful efforts with them. He accused Hamas of endangering civilians by launching rockets from residential spaces and inviting Israelis to retaliate. .
In a separate speech Wednesday, Sinwar also promised to get “a penny for singles” of foreign aid to rebuild Gaza after his war with Israel that devastated the enclave he heads. Sinwar promised a “transparent and impartial” aid distribution.
Diplomatic efforts are underway to consolidate a fragile truce negotiated through Egypt that ended the fighting, with plans to rebuild the Gaza Strip, where Israeli airstrikes have razed infrastructure and buildings.
“We welcome any Arab effort to rebuild the Gaza Strip,” Sinwar said at a press convention in Gaza.
“I make a commitment to take a penny for humanitarian and reconstruction efforts,” he said. “We’ve never had a penny in the past. “
Sinwar said Gaza has “enough monetary resources . . . much comes from Iran, and the component comes from Arab and Muslim donors and other loose people from the world who stand in solidarity with our other people and their rights. “
During a visit to Israel, U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that all aid would be “administered in a way that benefits the other Palestinians, not Hamas. “
Sinwar added: “I tell Blinken and everyone else: stop playing with our internal divisions. We know how to resolve our disorders internally. No more cultivated internal conflicts. We will make room for all who need to rebuild in Gaza or in the economic situation. “
An Israeli Ministry of Defense official said the entire budget earmarked for Gaza passes through a foreign “mechanism” to succeed directly on people, in order to prevent the terrorist organization from replenishing its arsenal of rockets.
The army’s most recent confrontation with Hamas ended in a ceasefire early Friday and began on May 10 when Hamas introduced a large rocket launcher against Israeli cities, prompting retaliatory moves through the IDF and 11 days of fighting, killing thirteen other people in Israel and killing. more than 240 in Gaza. The Israeli army said most of those killed in Gaza were terrorist fighters.
More than 4,000 rockets were fired at Israeli cities, according to the Israeli army, sending civilians across the center and south of the country to bomb shelters at all hours of the day and night and injuring many Israelis.
Hamas is an Islamic militant organization that brazenly seeks to destroy Israel. It has waged four wars and skirmishes opposed to Israel since the take-in of the Gaza Strip of the Palestinian Authority identified worldwide in 2007.
In his speech, Sinwar also praised the Israeli Arab riots in which Israeli Jews and their assets were attacked during the conflict. He claimed that there were “10,000 suicide bombers in Israel” in a position to respond to any Israeli “rape” in Jerusalem.
He said Israeli Arabs “have shown that so-called ‘Israelification’ – the attempt to turn them into Israeli citizens who in Palestinians – ” and ‘coexistence’ have fallen once and for all. “
Sinwar also rejected an Israeli operation to bomb Hamas’ network of underground tunnels, which his terrorists use for army operations. He’d enter the tunnels to prepare for war.
Later, the IDF denied deceiving someone, saying the statements were made incorrectly. The Hebrew media later reported that the operation had been less successful than expected: few Hamas fighters had entered the tunnels before being bombed.
“It is transparent to our army’s intelligence that this is a hoax and that there has not been an invasion of the floor,” Sinwar said.
The Hamas Ministry of Public Works said 258 buildings (about 1,042 residential and advertising sets) had been destroyed by the Israeli air campaign, 769 additional televisions were severely damaged, making them uninhabitable, and 14,536 suffered minor damage. Seventeen hospitals were damaged, like 53 schools.
More than 100,000 more people were internally displaced by hostilities, according to the UN. While many have since been able to return home, others have been left homeless.
The Israeli military says it targets civilian structures and is working to minimize damage to non-combatants. He argues that he is obliged to operate in civilian spaces because Palestinian terrorist teams are firing rockets at Israel from the densely populated cities of Gaza.
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