Israeli forces are “fiercely attacking the Gaza Strip and exacting a heavy price from the terrorist organizations,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address on Wednesday night in Israel.
“I would like to reiterate: Whoever harms us, whoever sends terrorists against us, will pay the price,” he stated.
Netanyahu said that developments in Israeli technological abilities, coupled with new operational tactics, have created “a new equation” seen in “Operation Shield and Arrow.”
Israel has dealt Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza “the hardest blow in its history,” said Netanyahu. “Within mere seconds, two seconds, in the middle of the night, at three separate locations, we simultaneously eliminated the terrorist organization’s leaders. We hit its anti-tank units, its arsenals and its rocket-production facilities.”
Of the rockets launched by the terrorist group at Israeli civilian populations, between a quarter and a third fell in the coastal enclave itself, and the majority of those that reached further to Israel were intercepted by missile-defense systems, added Netanyahu. “I would also like to commend the Defense Ministry and the security establishment for also developing the new systems that were successfully brought into action today,” he said, apparently of David’s Sling.
“Fortunately, as of now, no Israeli citizen has been wounded,” he said. “We entered this together. We will get through this together, and we will win together.”
To Israel’s enemies, he said pointedly: “We see you everywhere. You cannot hide. We will choose the time and place to attack you.”
