The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades announced its joint responsibility with the Al-Quds Brigades and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades for the shooting attack – last Monday – in the village of Al-Funduq in Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank, which resulted in the killing of 3 Israelis and the wounding of others.
Al-Qassam – the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) – said in a statement that what it described as “the martyr Commander Jaafar Dababassa was the mastermind of the heroic operation.”
The statement explained that Al-Qassam fighters, in conjunction with the Al-Quds Brigades and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, carried out the operation in the village of Al-Funduq, where their fighters finished off “Zionists before they withdrew and returned to their bases safely.”
The Al-Qassam Brigades indicated that “the heroic operation through which the resistance conveyed the message of solid field unity,” and said that “the upcoming joint operations will be the most eloquent messages of harmony and interconnectedness between the resistance factions (..) in their response to the enemy’s ongoing massacres in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank alike.” .
For its part, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah), claimed in a statement its responsibility, jointly with Al-Qassam and the Al-Quds Brigades, for a shooting attack near the village of Al-Funduq in the West Bank.
Three Palestinian resistance fighters, including two known to the Israeli Internal Security Service (Shin Bet), according to the occupation’s statement – last Monday – attacked a bus and vehicles carrying Israelis at the entrance to the hotel village and in two separate locations on the main road (Street 55) linking the cities of Nablus and Qalqilya.
The operation, which was carried out near the Kedumim settlement (named after the neighboring village of Kafr Qaddum), resulted in the killing of 3 Israelis and the wounding of 7 others, including serious injuries.
Celebration met with anger
Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Ubaida praised the Qalqilya operation immediately after it took place, and said that the Israeli occupation’s bets on dissuading resistance fighters in the West Bank from supporting Gaza are “doomed to failure.”
On the other hand, the operation angered Israeli officials, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened the perpetrators of the attack, saying: “We will reach the killers, and we will hold them accountable along with everyone who helped them, and we will not exclude anyone.”
Meanwhile, the far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that “the hotel village, Nablus and Jenin should look like Jabalia,” referring to the possible escalation.
Immediately following the operation, Netanyahu held an emergency security meeting with the Minister of Defense, the Chief of Staff, and the head of the Shin Bet, and the meeting concluded with issuing orders to begin a series of offensive and defensive security operations in the West Bank, in an attempt to control the situation.
In parallel with the genocide in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, the Israeli army expanded its operations and settlers escalated their attacks in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, resulting in the killing of 847 Palestinians and the injury of about 6,700, according to official Palestinian data.
While the Israeli genocide in Gaza left more than 155,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.
Israel continues its massacres, ignoring two arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court on November 21, against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Galant, for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinians in Gaza.