Mourning British Dad ‘Delighted’ by Israeli Vengeance Killing
Israel on Thursday announced that its soldiers had killed the Palestinian gunmen responsible for murdering two British-Israeli sisters and their mother last month.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said the “Hamas terrorists” who shot Lucy Dee and her two daughters, Maia and Rina, had been “neutralized” along with a “senior operative” who helped them. “Together, Israeli forces will continue thwarting all direct threats of terrorism toward Israeli civilians,” the IDF added.
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The IDF did not name the three Palestinians killed, but Hamas said they were members of its armed wing and identified them as Hassan Qatnani, Moaz al-Masri and Ibrahim Jabr, according to Al Jazeera. Palestinian officials said four others were wounded in the Israeli operation in Nablus in the north of the occupied West Bank.
Hamas also claimed responsibility for the April 7 killing of the Dee family north of Jericho in which shooters opened fire on the family’s vehicle as they drove through the Jordan Valley on a family trip. Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, died at the scene of the attack while Lucy, 48, died after being rushed to the hospital.
The women moved to Israel from the U.K. nine years ago and resided in the illegal settlement of Efrat, south of Jerusalem.
Hamas characterized the Israeli killing of its three members as an “assassination” of the “heroes of resistance in the city of Nablus.”
Rabbi Leo Dee, the women’s father and husband, told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper he has “no hatred” in his heart for the gunmen who killed his family members. “I and the kids were delighted to hear that the terrorists were neutralized and eliminated today, and most of all that it was done in a way that apparently did not endanger the lives of Israeli soldiers,” he said. “Because that was one of the most important things from our family’s perspective.”
Israeli forces had been searching for the Dee family’s killers for several weeks. Nablus, the city where they were reportedly found and killed, has been the site of numerous Israeli raids in the West Bank over the last year as violence between Israel and Palestine has spiraled amid rising tensions in the region.
“Our message to those who harm us, and those who want to harm us, is that whether it takes a day, a week or a month—you can be certain that we will settle accounts with you,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the wake of the Hamas members’ killings. “It does not matter where you try to hide—we will find you. Whoever attacks us will pay the price.”
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