Hamas’s latest claims of responsibility indicate resumption of suicide attacks

For the first time in nearly two decades, Hamas has started using the term “suicide attacks” with regard to its latest terror bombings.

In its latest claim of responsibility following a dual car bombing in the Gush Etzion area on Friday, Hamas praised the two perpetrators, Hebron residents Muhammad Ihsan Marqa and Zuhdi Abu Afifa, and announced “the first martyrdom operations in the Hebron governorate,” employing the term commonly used in Arabic for suicide attacks.

In its statement, the terror group vowed to deliver further “painful surprises” throughout the West Bank.

The twin car bombing came two days after top Hamas official Khaled Mashaal called for a resumption of suicide bombings in the West Bank, as the terror group comes under heavy military pressure in Gaza.

On August 18, a few days before Mashaal’s speech, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad had claimed an intended suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. The attacker died when his backpack exploded, and a passerby was injured. The joint statement by the two terror groups referred to the operation as a suicide bombing.

Hamas championed this type of attacks for years, and conducted them throughout the 1990s and through the end of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, but they have been rare in the years since.

According to government sources, the latest suicide bomb attack claimed by Hamas inside Israel was in a shopping center in the southern city of Dimona in February 2008, in which a woman was killed and 38 were wounded.

Another suicide attack was carried out by a member of Hamas’s military wing on a bus in Jerusalem in April 2016, in which 21 were injured. The group did not officially claim the operation at the time.

Experts indicate that multiple attempts to carry out suicide bombings were foiled in recent years.

Source » timesofisrael.com