By Xinhua
Gaza : Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement on Saturday said the Israeli army could never stop the home-made rocket attack even if it unleashes a wide offensive against the Gaza Strip.
“The Israeli invasion will redouble the rocket-fire because the Gaza Strip would be considered occupied,” Naffez Azzam, a senior Islamic Jihad leader, told reporters in Gaza.
His remarks were in response to Israeli threats to cut fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip and reoccupy a corridor between Egypt and the Hamas-run Strip, where most of Gaza arms are allegedly being smuggled through underground tunnels.
Azzam also called on the feuding rivals of Hamas and Fatah to “restore confidence among each other in order to protect the Palestinian people from the Israeli threats.”
Hamas has routed security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas in June and took over the Gaza Strip, politically separating the territory from the Fatah-dominated West Bank where Abbas has formed his own government after sacking the Hamas-led coalition.
Meanwhile, Azzam termed the Israeli threat to strike Gaza as “indications about the nature of the conference,” referring to a U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace conference to be held later this month in the U.S.
“No one can imagine that the suffering of the Palestinian people would be over after the conference … but the most important thing again is the Palestinian internal situation and the relations between the people,” Azzam said.
In July, Bush called for an international peace conference to invite Israel, the Palestinians, Arab and world leaders to resume the peace process and end up with establishing a Palestinian state.
The much-touted peace conference is expected to be held in Annapolis in the U.S. in the last week of November.
In early October, Israel and the Palestinians formed two negotiating teams to hammer out the joint document over resuming the peace negotiations.