Hamas calls for more violence amid blood-soaked days
The terror group also asks for financial and military support from allies in rare admission of weakness, claiming to have been abandoned
Dov Lieber is a former Times of Israel Arab affairs correspondent.
Hamas called on Friday for revenge against Israelis following the death of two Palestinians, as Israel continued to grapple with a string of terror attacks.
Israeli Security forces on Friday morning thwarted an attempted attack next to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron. The attacker, named as 27-year-old Sarah Tarayrah, was said to be a relative of the teenage terrorist, Muhammad Tarayrah, who on Thursday murdered 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel as she slept in her own bed.
Later on Friday, a Palestinian man, 63-year-old Muhammad Habbash from Nablus, died at the Qalandiya checkpoint in the West Bank between Ramallah and Jerusalem. An Israeli military source said that the man’s death was caused by a heart attack; the Palestinian Health Ministry said he died from inhaling tear gas during clashes.
In a press release, the terror group as well as other armed Palestinian factions called for the “youth” of the West Bank to take revenge against Israelis for “crimes against our elders” through “resistance in all its forms” — a euphemism for terrorism and violent attacks.
Hamas said Israel would pay a “heavy price” for its crimes over the month of Ramadan, adding the Islamic holy month has always been the “month of Jihad and resistance.”
The Gaza-based terror group’s calls for attacks came amid two bloody days for Israelis.
Miki Mark, a rabbi who heads a West Bank yeshiva, was killed Friday afternoon and his wife and children were injured when their family car came under gunfire from a passing vehicle and overturned, south of the West Bank city of Hebron.
On Thursday, 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel was killed in her home at the Kiryat Arba settlement adjacent to Hebron.
On the same day, two adult Israelis were injured during a stabbing in Netanya, one was seriously wounded and the other lightly injured.
Hamas calls for financial and military support
Hamas released a second press release on Friday urging Islamic and Arab nations to give it financial and military support.
The terror organization, in a rare admission of weakness, said it was facing abandonment and dealing with increased security coordination between Arab nations and Israel.
Turkey, one of Hamas’s main allies, signed a normalization deal with Israel on Wednesday, in which Ankara agreed to prevent any military action by Hamas on its soil.
Egypt, another historical ally to the terror group, has scorned Hamas since its ideological umbrella group the Muslim Brotherhood was kicked out of office in 2014 by Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.
The Times of Israel Community.