Palestinian fighters have finger on trigger to repeat Operation al-Quds Sword: Hamas leader

“Palestinian resistance combatants still have their finger on the trigger and are ready to repeat the Operation al-Quds Sword,” Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas political bureau abroad, said as he referred to last May’s 11-day war between Israel and the Gaza-based Palestinian groups.

“We do not seek another war, but we cannot give up our land, al-Quds as well as holy sites,” Meshaal noted as he addressed an online symposium, dubbed “The Resistance is Ongoing”, on Thursday evening.

“The coming Ramadan will be a difficult spell and its days will be loaded with surprises as the enemy seeks to enforce calmness at the same time as pressing ahead with its [Aqsa Mosque] break-ins and aggression,” the senior Hamas official noted.

He also lauded as “heroic” the Tuesday shooting operation near the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv.

“The heroic operation further proved that resistance is the right path. It also sent a clear message, saying ‘Enough for Normalization and Negotiations,’” Meshaal highlighted.

On Monday evening, Hamas deputy political chief Saleh al-Arouri said the next battle with the Israeli army will be “a game-changer” that will “open up gates of hell” to the Tel Aviv regime.

“The 11-day Operation Sword of al-Quds between the Gaza-based Palestinian resistance groups and the Zionist regime (in May 2021) was a prelude to a longer fighting, for which we were prepared,” Arouri said in an interview with Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television news network.

He added, “The next confrontation with the Israeli occupation for defense of al-Quds will be much broader and more popular. It will be a game-changer in the history of the conflict with the Tel Aviv regime.”

Arouri underscored that “any Israeli aggression against Palestinian worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque compound will escalate the ongoing tensions.”

“Restrictions on the worshipers and preventing them from reaching the al-Aqsa mosque compound during the holy fasting month of Ramadan will open up the gates of hell to the occupying Israeli regime,” the Hamas official noted.

“Any Israeli aggression against worshipers at al-Aqsa will create more tensions,” Arouri said, warning, “It is now the time for the occupiers to learn the lesson that al-Quds, its holy places, and the al-Aqsa mosque are a red line to us.”

The remarks come amid heightened tensions in the occupied Palestinian territories ahead of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

On Tuesday night, a Palestinian man, identified as Diaa Hamarsheh, killed five people, including a security force, before being shot dead by security forces in the ultra-orthodox town of Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv.

On Sunday, two Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli security forces and wounded four others in a shooting attack in the northern Israeli city of Hadera before they were shot dead.

It followed an attack on March 22, when 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.

Palestinians want the occupied West Bank as part of their future independent state and view al-Quds’ eastern sector as the capital of their future sovereign state.