Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad both praised the stabbing death of an Israeli yeshivah student on Thursday.
In a statement, Hamas said that “our people’s heroic fighters who carried out the heroic operation that killed a soldier in the occupation’s army.”
Palestinian Islamic Jihad also called it a “heroic attack which sends an important message.”
Dvir Sorek, a 19-year-old yeshivah student and Israel Defense Forces’ recruit was found dead by the side of a road Thursday morning near Kibbutz Migdal Oz in Gush Etzion, in what is being viewed by Israeli authorities as a terrorist attack.
According to the IDF, initial findings indicate that Sorek was abducted and murdered at a different location, and that his body was then dumped near Migdal Oz. A search operation is currently being conducted in Beit Fajjar, an Arab enclave close to where the body was found.
Additionally, Hamas said that the attack is a “powerful response to talks of annexing the occupied bank.”
“This is a decision of our people to expel the occupier from the bank. It’s proof that our people’s intifada continues in the West Bank and that the young do not renounce their struggle until the occupation is vanished and settlers expelled,” said Hamas.
While it remains unclear who carried out the terror attack on Thursday, it bears similarity to Hamas’s abduction and murder of Naftali Fraenkel, 16, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, in the same region in June 2014.
Israel’s Shin Bet security service said in a statement earlier this week that Hamas is expending resources to recruit terrorists to carry out attacks in Judea and Samaria.
“A number of Hamas military cells have been uncovered in the Judea and Samaria area in recent weeks who were operating under the instruction of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and who were planning to carry out terror attacks against Israeli and Palestinian Authority targets,” it said.