Turn West Bank into absolute hell for Israelis, al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades directs fighters

The military wing of the Palestinian Fatah movement has ordered its fighters to turn the occupied West Bank into sheer hell for Israeli military forces and settlers in the wake of the Tel Aviv regime’s violent crackdown in the Jerusalem al-Quds as well as bloody airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, in a statement released on Friday, directed its combatants not to spare the “cowardly flocks of settlers and shivering occupation soldiers in case sinful attacks on our people and residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood do not stop,” the Lebanon-based and Arabic-language al-Akhbar daily newspaper reported.

“Set up all routes, settlements and camps in the West Bank as your targets, and turn the area into absolute hell!” the statement pointed out.

Meanwhile, a senior official of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) stated that Israel will face an existential crisis in case it engages in a military onslaught on the Palestinian resistance front, stating that the Joint Operations Room has “unexpected surprises” for the regime.

Talal Abu Zarifa, a member of DFLP’s political bureau, stressed in an interview with Tasnim news agency that the Joint Operations Room is well prepared for the current fighting with Israel, has great capabilities to rely on and can put out resistance for a long period of time.

“Over the last few days of the latest round of fighting, the resistance front was able to achieve great achievements and successes within the framework of deterrence, which confused the occupiers and left them with no option but to target civilian facilities and neighborhoods in an insane and indiscriminate manner,” he said.

Abu Zarifa underscored that Palestinian factions have unanimously agreed not to observe a ceasefire with Tel Aviv unless the occupying Israeli regime stops its aggression against al-Aqsa Mosque and residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

Tensions have escalated in Jerusalem al-Quds, the occupied West Bank and Gaza amid the planned forced expulsions of dozens of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, where illegal Israeli settlers are looking to take over the properties of Palestinian families.

Despite international calls for an immediate halt of all hostilities, including from United Nations chief Antonio Guterres, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged that the offensive against the Gaza Strip will continue.

Israel continued to bombard the impoverished enclave with air raids and artillery shells on Saturday, killing several children and women at a refugee camp.

As of early Saturday, at least 137 Palestinians, including 36 children, have been killed and 920 have been wounded since hostilities flared up on Monday.

The Israeli army said hundreds of rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip towards various locations in the occupied territories.

Houthi: Saudi Arabia should better bomb Israel than Yemen

Separately, a senior member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council has reacted to Israeli regime’s attacks on the Gaza Strip and its acts of aggression across the occupied West Bank.

“Saudi Arabia should stop airstrikes and aggression against Yemen, and instead hit Israel which is bombing Palestine,” Mohammed Ali al-Houthi wrote in a post published on his Twitter page.

He added, “I call upon Saudi Arabia and members of the Riyadh-led coalition to attack several targets inside Israel for the sake of the [Palestinian] victims’ families and the issue of Palestine.”

Houthi noted that the Yemeni armed forces will accordingly relinquish their right to retaliatory attacks even in the face of Saudi-led air raids and tight blockade on Yemen.

Saudi Arabia, backed by the US and other regional allies, launched the bloody war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing popular Ansarullah movement. 

Yemeni armed forces and allied Popular Committees have, however, gone from strength to strength against the Saudi-led invaders, and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.

The Saudi-led military aggression has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions of people. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases across the country.