The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) organization announced on Sunday that 11 of its commanders and fighters were killed during the latest round of fighting with Israel, which ended with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on Saturday night.
The announcement came as senior PIJ and Hamas officials said that the Palestinian armed factions claimed they won the five-day fighting with Israel.
A statement issued by PIJ’s military wing, Al-Quds Brigades, said its men were killed in “assassinations” that were carried out by the “Zionist enemy.”
It said that the “blood of the martyrs will become fuel for the continuation of the confrontation and struggle until the liberation of Palestine.”
Death of terrorist ‘heroes’ won’t stop Palestinian resistance, PIJ says
The group said that the death of its “heroes” won’t stop the “resistance” against Israel.
It identified the slain members as: Jihad Shaker al-Ghannam, 62, Khalil Salah al-Bahtini, 45, Tareq Ibrahim Izzaddin, 49, Eyad al-Abed al-Hasni, 52, Ali Hassan Ghali, 48, Ahmed Mahmoud Abu Dakka, 43, Mohammed Walid Abed al-Al, 33, Elayan Ata Abu Wadi, 37, Abdel Halim Jawdat al-Najjar, 22, Saed Jawad Farawneh, 28, and Wael Sabri al-Agha, 34.
PIJ Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhaleh, who is based in Lebanon, boasted that the Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip “will never be defeated.” The factions, he said, “will continue to fight for the liberation of Palestine no long how long it takes.” Israel, the PIJ leader added, failed in its attempt to defeat the Palestinians.
Ahmed al-Mudalal, a member of PIJ’s political bureau, claimed that his group was able to force Israel to “submit” to its conditions for ending the fighting.
The PIJ and its military wing, he said, succeeded in “downsizing” Israel’s military power “through their steadfastness in the battlefield, forcing it to yield to their conditions to end the fighting.”
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, whose group did not join the fighting against Israel, praised the armed factions in the Gaza Strip for leading the battle through the Joint Operations Room of the Palestinian Resistance Factions. Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar, claimed that the Palestinian factions “foiled the [Israeli] enemy’s attempt to impose new equations,” especially by driving a wedge between Hamas and PIJ.
Palestinians said on Sunday that they don’t expect a crisis between Hamas and PIJ in light of the former’s failure to join the fighting against Israel.
They pointed out, however, that PIJ has again reasserted its status as the second largest armed group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas.
“Islamic Jihad has shown that it can fire hundreds of rockets at Israel even without help from Hamas,” said a Palestinian political analyst in the West Bank city of Nablus. “The group, which receives tens of millions of dollars from Iran every year, has also shown that it can continue the fight against Israel even after the assassination of several of its top military commanders. There’s no doubt that Islamic Jihad has scored points with the Palestinian street.”
Hamas, PIJ to hold meetings on Operation Shield and Arrow
Palestinian sources said that Hamas and PIJ officials are expected to hold a series of meetings in the coming days to draw conclusions from the recent round of fighting with Israel and discuss ways of enhancing cooperation between the two groups.
A senior Hamas official on Saturday dismissed reports about a “crisis” between his group and PIJ in the aftermath of the latest conflict with Israel. The official was commenting on reports in Israeli and Arab media outlets that talked about “tensions” between the two groups as a result of Hamas’s failure to join the fighting.
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