Hamas Says Israel ’Must Pay The Price’ for Attacks Against Gaza Strip
The Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas has warmed that Israel will “pay the price” for its aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip, after a series of ground and aerial attacks the Tel Aviv regime launched against the impoverished enclave during the past several weeks.
In a statement released on Friday, Hamas said that the Tel Aviv regime “must bear the consequences and pay the price for the continued aggression against Gaza, the tightening of the siege, the disruption of the lives of residents and the bombing of resistance facilities.”
The coastal sliver, home to some two million people, has been under an Israeli-imposed crippling siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in the living standards as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty there.
Israel has also launched three major wars against the enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans each time and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.
For the past several weeks, the Israeli war machine has been pounding different areas of Gaza either by its warplanes or through artillery fire, claiming that the attacks were mainly in response to incendiary balloons sent by Gazans to cause bush fire in the southern parts of the occupied territories.
On Thursday night and in the early hours of Friday, Hamas allegedly fired at least a dozen rockets toward Israel, the regime’s military said, adding that the attack drew three rounds of reprisal airstrikes by Israeli fighter jets, targeting underground infrastructure belonging to Hamas.
The Israeli regime every so often launches strikes against positions in the blockaded enclave, accusing resistance groups there of launching attacks.
“The resistance clarifies that it will not hesitate to wage a campaign against Israel if the escalation and bombings continue,” the Hamas statement further read.
The Israeli military has already boosted the number of Iron Dome batteries in the southern parts of the Israeli-occupied territories in response to the uptick in tensions between the two sides.
It has also ordered the cessation of agricultural work in the vicinity of the border fence, which separates Gaza Strip from the occupied territories, until further notice.
Flying fiery kites and balloons has become a new mode of protest by Gazans since March 2018, when the Tel Aviv regime began a crackdown against anti-occupation demonstrations near the fence separating Gaza from the Israeli-occupied territories, killing and injuring many people.
The development comes amid reported ceasefire efforts being brokered by Egypt.
Source: Press TV