Yahya Ayyash’s Legacy Reborn: What Tel Aviv Attack Means for Israel and the Palestinian Cause

By Elijah J. Magnier:

Israel is committing almost daily massacres against displaced Palestinians inside the Gaza Strip, specifically inside the “safe zone” that the occupation army has defined within 35 square kilometres. This represents less than 10 per cent of the area of the Strip, where 2.5 million Palestinians are forced to live in tents and schools and in poor health and nutritional conditions. The latest of these was the bombing of the Mustafa Hafez School in western Gaza, where two floors were destroyed, in which displaced children and women were housed, as a means used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to impose terms of surrender on the Palestinian resistance. America has been covering up thousands of these Israeli crimes since the beginning of the war ten months ago, ignoring them and tirelessly supporting Netanyahu. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says, “Israel agreed to the proposal, and Hamas’s answer remains.” President Joe Biden confirmed the same narrative. What the two men did not say is that Israel agreed to its proposal, which was constantly modified with new conditions, and rejected the latest Israeli proposal that Biden had put forward a few months ago and that Hamas had agreed to. Netanyahu is now offering additional impossible conditions that the resistance cannot accept. The Israeli prime minister does not want to stop the war or withdraw from Gaza but instead intends to secure the return of the Israeli prisoners to continue the fighting after the exchange process.

Through the repeated Israeli massacres, Israel’s refusal to stop its massacres and its enjoyment of impunity by the international community, the political, economic and military scene in the Middle East faces a new challenge in the wake of the recent suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, for which Hamas and Islamic Jihad jointly claimed responsibility. This attack goes back to the tactics used by Hamas leader Yahya Ayyash, known as “the Engineer”. Ayyash was a prominent Palestinian figure in the resistance who was experienced in making bombs that caused massive destruction in Israel before he was assassinated in 1996 with a booby-trapped phone.