According to medics in the Gaza Strip and the Hamas-controlled Ministry of the Interior, the target of Wednesday’s airstrike was a police station in Gaza City. In addition to Azzam al-Hajji, three more policemen were to be killed and several other people were injured. The Israeli army has not yet commented on the airstrike, reports Reuters.
Attacks by Israeli forces on police forces in Gaza have intensified recently. It is precisely the police that Hamas uses to consolidate its rule by force in the areas from which the Israelis have withdrawn.
The current negotiator of Hamas, Khalil al-Hajjá, survived several Israeli assassination attempts during his life. However, he lost his sons during three of them. It happened for the first time in 2008, the second time in 2014 and the last time last year, when Israelis tried to kill al-Hajju in Doha, Qatar. The attack on the territory of the country that mediated the peace negotiations between Israel and Hamas significantly disrupted Israeli relations with the surrounding states.
After Wednesday’s airstrike, Al-Hajjá, who has only three of his seven children left, accused Israel of trying to undermine negotiators’ efforts to move forward in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s peace plan, which is to be overseen by the Trump Peace Council. “These Zionist attacks and violations of the ceasefire clearly indicate that the occupation does not want to observe the ceasefire or its first phase,” said Al-Hajjá.
Dozens of Palestinians attended the funeral of the negotiator’s son on Thursday. “Your martyrdom, my beloved brother, yours and that of my brothers Hamam, Osama and Hamza, my father… will not deter this principle or these fixed values,” Azzam’s sister said at the funeral, without specifying which principle and fixed values she was talking about.
According to medical professionals in Gaza, Israeli attacks have claimed the lives of at least 830 Palestinians since the October truce, which stalled in the first phase. According to Israel, Palestinian militants killed four Israeli soldiers in the same period. Hamas publicly takes the position that Israeli attacks are responsible for the stagnation of the implementation of the peace plan. Tel Aviv says the Israeli strikes are defensive and the second phase of the peace plan cannot be advanced until Hamas lays down its arms.
