Dead terror leader encouraged Jihad and “blowing up all of this Zionist entity’s cities”

Senior Islamic Jihad official Khalil Al-Bahtini: “What we were educated on, and [what] our culture is, is that whoever lives on this land and does not merit Martyrdom, he has lost out. Allah has honored us in this land with Ribat (i.e., religious conflict over land claimed to be Islamic) and Jihad, and we have no role in this blessed land other than Jihad.It is our honor, all the honor, that we are fighting against Israel, this thieving entity, and that we are educating our sons to hate this entity.It is our honor that we are continuing with all our days, efforts, and intentions to blow up all of this Zionist entity’s cities. Thus we will record in history that the resistance fighters of Palestine, and the resistance fighters of the Gaza Strip, were like a thorn in the throat of this entity, and that they did not negotiate and did not renounce a [single] grain of soil of this land.”

[Fatah Movement – Bethlehem Branch, Telegram channel, May 9, 2023]

Posted text on Telegram channel: “‘Whoever lives on this land and does not merit Martyrdom – he has lost out.

It is our honor, all the honor, that we are fighting against “Israel.”’

Great commander Martyr Khalil Al-Bahtini (i.e., senior official of the Islamic Jihad terror organization), may Allah receive him”

Khalil Al-Bahtini, Tareq Izz Al-Din, and Jihad Al-Ghannam – Senior officials of the Islamic Jihad terror organization who were involved in rocket attacks targeting Israel in April 2023, and were actively planning terror attacks in the West Bank. The three were killed together with 10 others, primarily their relatives, in targeted Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on May 9, 2023, as part of Israel’s Operation Shield and Arrow. The strikes also targeted Islamic Jihad terror infrastructure including weapons storehouses and weapons manufacturing sites