The Palestinian resistance groups based in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip have officially launched joint defensive drills, while sternly warning the Israeli regime against trying any new bout of adventurism.
The movements’ joint operations room announced the launch of the maneuvers during a press conference on Monday, the Palestine al-Yawm satellite channel reported.
The event, which is joined by the outfits’ military branches, simulates various scenarios and is carried out throughout the whole expanse of the Palestinian enclave, the center said.
The drills seek to enhance the level of the resistance fighters’ preparedness for military conflict in different circumstances and junctures, it added.
“We will not allow the Zionist enemy to commit an act of aggression against the Palestinian nation. Our weapons are always ready. The resistance has taken a uniform and common decision to confront whatever potential imposed warfare by the enemy at whatever time or in whatever place,” the operations room cautioned.
Israel has been keeping Gaza under an all-out siege since 2007, when the Hamas resistance movement rose to power following elections there. The regime has also been taking the territory under almost daily military attacks to supposedly deter the group and its affiliates.
The Israeli military waged three full-scale wars against the coastal sliver in the 2000s, killing and injuring thousands of Palestinians during each.
The combination of the siege and incessant military aggression has turned the entire Gaza into a relatively uninhabitable open prison.
The command center warned that even the very act of contemplating an act of aggression or a new instance of adventurism against Palestinians would be met with a “decisive and severe” response on the part of the resistance.
Israel warned of surprise operations
The Gaza-based outfits were at their best possible level of readiness, it said. “By God’s grace, we have many surprise operations in store for the enemy.”
The resistance movements would also prevent the Israeli regime from imposing any “new equations” on the Palestinian people and would be the party with the final say in the event of any confrontation, the center noted.
The operations room, meanwhile, asserted that a September-present trend of normalization between some regional Arab regimes and Tel Aviv that the United States has been mediating did not change anything on the ground concerning the resistance groups’ resolve to confront the occupying regime.
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco have normalized their ties with Tel Aviv under the US-brokered drive, something that the command center denounced as “humiliating.”