Following drill, Hamas warns Israel against ‘rash acts’

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, has warned Israel against carrying out any acts of aggression against the Palestinian people, saying the response to such acts would be "immediate".

"The [Palestinian] resistance is ready to confront any Zionist aggression against our people or land," Qassam spokesman Abu Ubaida said in an address delivered after a two-day military drill conducted across the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

"Nor will we hesitate to defend our people and their rights," he declared.

He added: "We warn the enemy [i.e., Israel] against committing any rash acts against the Palestinian people, for which it will pay a steep price".

Abu Ubaida also announced the conclusion of extensive military training exercises that began Sunday morning.

Carried out by the Qassam Brigades, the two-day exercises were intended to test the Brigades' combat readiness and prepare for simultaneous Israeli assaults on the Gaza Strip, according to Abu Ubaida.

"Exercises included maneuvers aimed at countering [Israeli] landing operations from air, land and sea," he said.

According to Anadolu Agency correspondents in Gaza, hundreds of Qassam fighters have been deployed across the blockaded coastal enclave.

Notably, the military drills come only days before a planned Friday rally during which Gazan demonstrators plan to converge en masse on the strip's roughly 45-kilometer-long eastern border with Israel.

Dubbed the "Great Return March", the event is intended to ratchet up pressure on Israel to lift its decade-long blockade of Gaza and reaffirm the Palestinians' right to return to their homes in historical Palestine.

Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has groaned under a crippling Israeli/Egyptian blockade that has largely destroyed the enclave's economy and deprived its roughly 2 million inhabitants of basic commodities.