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Tensions high on Gaza border as Islamic Jihad vows revenge
Israeli security forces are on high alert after Islamic Jihad threatened reprisal attacks following the destruction of a tunnel built to infiltrate Israel from Gaza.
The Islamic Jihad military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, released a video clip yesterday threatening Israel, in which it showed its preparations for firing rockets. The threat was made after Israel destroyed a tunnel being built by Palestinian Islamic Jihad which extended from the Gazan city of Khan Younis into Israeli territory, near Kibbutz Kissufim.
Seven Palestinians, including two senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders and two members of Hamas’s elite naval unit, were killed after an explosion in the tunnel and 12 others were injured.
Israeli security officials have warned that the IDF will respond very forcefully to any reprisal attack.
Major General Yoav Mordechai, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), refused a request by the Red Cross to search for the missing bodies in the tunnel. He said, “Israel will not allow search operations in the area of the security barrier in the Gaza Strip without progress on the issue of Israelis kidnapped”. Hamas claims that five bodies are still inside the tunnel.
Hamas is holding the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, Shaul Oron and Hadar Goldin, killed during Operation Protective Edge in 2014 and has refused requests from Israel and the Red Cross to return them. Hamas has also detained three other Israeli citizens — Avraham Mengistu, Hisham al-Sayed and Juma Abu Anima — all of whom are believed to have entered the Gaza of their own volition.
Amir Peretz (Zionist Union) and Shuli Muallem-Refaeli (Jewish Home), who lead a Knesset caucus working to return the soldiers’ remains, have said that humanitarian gestures must be balanced on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. “We have been waiting more than three years for them to return our missing [citizens]. If Hamas wants the bodies of the terrorists buried under the rubble of the tunnel, it must also return our missing soldiers,” Peretz and Muallem-Refaeli said.
Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman has ruled out any discussion of returning Hamas terrorists whilst they continue to hold Israeli civilians. He said: “There is no reason in the world for them to hold bodies of soldiers for three years while we permit them to get back bodies of terrorists.”