Various Palestinian resistance groups have hailed the “heroic” shooting operation by a pair of Palestinian gunmen in the northern city of Hadera, describing it a response to a meeting between top diplomats from four Arab states and Israeli officials in the occupied region of Negev.
Dawood Shahab, a spokesman for the Islamic Jihad resistance movement, said it is necessary to carry out such operations deep inside the occupied territories in order to deter the Israeli enemy from committing acts of aggression and terror against Palestinians.
“Operation Hadera is a response from Palestinians and freedom-loving people of the Muslim Ummah to the evil meeting, which foreign ministers of some Arab countries are participating in,” the senior Islamic Jihad official stated.
“This operation is a strong deterrent message to settlers and soldiers of the occupying Israeli regime, who are causing corruption and destruction and are killing hundreds of innocent people,” Shahab said.
Two Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli security forces and wounded four others in a shooting attack in northern Israel before they were shot dead.
The attack came as the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco – three Arab countries that normalized relations with Israel in 2020 – came together for a meeting in southern Israel, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, also in attendance.
The incident occurred five days after a Palestinian man was fatally shot over an alleged stabbing attack near a shopping center in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, which left four Israeli settlers dead.
Hamas also termed the incident as a “heroic operation” and a “natural and legitimate response” to the “Israeli regime’s crimes against Palestinians and their sacred sites.”
“We commend the valor and courage of those who carried out the heroic operation. It came in retaliation for the blood of martyrs, and in response to the aggression and terror of the Israeli regime,” the resistance movement said in a statement.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) also lauded the shooting attack in the northern Israeli city of Hadera, situated about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Tel Aviv, as “heroic,” saying it was in response to the Negev meeting.
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), for its part, praised the incident as “a fresh blow to Israeli security and intelligence services.”
Yemen’s Ansarullah felicitates Palestinians on Hadera operation
In a related development, the spokesman for Yemen’s popular Ansarullah resistance movement hailed the Hadera operation as a response to the “treacherous path of normalization” with Israel by some Arab states.
“We congratulate the heroic Hadera operation. It is a practical response to the treacherous path of normalization and an affirmation of the vigilance and creativity of the Palestinian nation in devising means of confronting the occupying regime,” Mohammed Abdul-Salam wrote in a post published on his Twitter page.
نبارك عملية الخضيرة البطولية وهي رد عملي على مسار التطبيع الخياني وتأكيد على حيوية الشعب الفلسطيني وإبداعه في ابتكار وسائل المواجهة ضد كيان الاحتلال
— محمد عبدالسلام (@abdusalamsalah) March 28, 2022
Israel occupied the West Bank and East al-Quds during the Six-Day War in 1967. It later annexed East al-Quds in a move not recognized by the international community.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state with East al-Quds as its capital.