The Hamas terrorist group on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the previous day’s shooting that saw six Israeli civilians killed in northern Jerusalem.
The statement was published shortly before the Israel Defense Forces carried out a precision strike on Hamas’s senior leadership at the terror organization’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.
“Kill them wherever you come upon them,” opened the statement on the Telegram channel of Hamas’s “military wing,” the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
Hamas praised its gunmen, Mohammad Taha and Muthanna Amro, for having succeeded in “killing Zionists and wounding others, some of them critically, before ascending to their Lord as martyrs, facing the enemy without turning back.”
The “qualitative operation” was “a clear message that all your failed attempts to dry up the sources of resistance will only bring you the blood of your Nazi army’s soldiers and criminal settlers in ways you do not expect.”
Israel’s moves against Hamas “will be met with the steadfastness of the people and bravery of the resistance, Inshallah [‘God willing’],” it continued.
Following Tuesday’s airstrikes in Doha, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed he had ordered the military a day earlier to prepare for possible assassinations of Hamas leaders abroad in response to the Jerusalem shooting and a Gaza tank blast that killed four IDF soldiers.
Jerusalem’s statement said the strikes were “entirely justified given that this Hamas leadership initiated and organized the Oct. 7 massacre and has continued to launch murderous actions against the State of Israel and its citizens since then, including claiming responsibility for the killing of our citizens in yesterday’s attack in Jerusalem,” he said.
The IDF announced on Tuesday morning that it had expanded counter-terrorism operations across Judea and Samaria in the wake of Monday’s attack.
Troops of the military’s Binyamin Brigade operated in the Palestinian villages of Qatanna and Al-Qubeiba to map the homes of the Hamas terrorists behind Monday’s attack ahead of their possible demolition.
The demolition of Palestinian terrorists’ homes has been a subject of controversy for years. Israel’s security establishment believes that the policy bolsters deterrence and prevents further terrorist activity.
In early 2023, demolitions all but stopped, according to an Israel Hayom investigation carried out with Zionist NGO Im Tirtzu. However, after the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, the military picked up the pace, issuing demolition orders for a significant number of terrorists’ homes.
On Tuesday, IDF soldiers demolished the homes of terrorists Thabet Mohammed Masalmeh, Abd al-Ra’uf Masri and Ahmed Abu Ara.
Masalmeh was part of a terrorist cell that murdered a 12-year-old Israeli boy in a Dec. 11 shooting in Judea, while Masri and Abu Ara were members of the terrorist cell that murdered 23-year-old Israeli Yonatan Deutsch in a shooting in the Jordan Valley on Aug. 11, 2024.
At the same time, the IDF’s Central Command announced its intention to destroy the homes of Maher and Nael Samara, who murdered Tzeela Gez, 30, as she was on her way to deliver her fourth son.
Gez’s baby, who was named Ravid Chaim, was delivered after the attack, but succumbed to his wounds two weeks later.
Palestinian terrorists targeted Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria at least 6,343 times in 2024, according to figures published by Hatzalah Judea and Samaria on Feb. 17.
Twenty-seven Israelis were murdered in Judea and Samaria last year, with more than 300 others wounded, the NGO’s annual report stated.
