RAMALLAH: Ahmad Jabari, head of Hamas military wing, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday afternoon, along with five other Palestinians, reports Ha'aretz. Hamas, the militant Islamist party governing the Gaza Strip, said that Jabari and another passenger were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit his car. Jabari is the highest ranking Hamas official to be killed by Israel since the 2008 Gaza War, known in Israel as Operation Cast Lead. He is believed to have been the mastermind behind the kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who was held by Hamas for five years until eventually being released in an October 2011 prisoner swap that resulted in the release of over a thousand Palestinian prisoners. Jabari was also the chief Hamas negotiator during Shalit's imprisonment in Gaza. The IDF blog stated that the purpose of Jabari's assassination was “to severely impair the command and control chain of the Hamas leadership, as well as its terrorist infrastructure." By striking Gaza on Wednesday, Israel apparently reneged on an earlier ceasefire brokered through Egyptian channels. The Palestinian Popular Resistance Committee (PRC) issued a statement condemning the assassination of Jabari as a declaration of war. “With this assassination, Israel opened the gates of hell," PRC spokesman Abu Mujahid said on Wednesday, according to Ma'an News Agency. “Cowardly settlers had better flee to shelters where we will bury them and they will never be able to leave,” Abu Mujahid reportedly told Ma'an. Protests are reportedly scheduled for Wednesday evening in Cairo, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, and elsewhere in solidarity with the people of Gaza.
