The Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza knowingly launched defective rockets throughout the course of the Israel-Hamas War, killing hundreds of Gazans, KAN Reshet Bet reported on Tuesday, citing a document recovered from the Gaza Strip.
According to the report, the document, which contains a summary of a meeting between a Hamas and PIJ official in Lebanon, was investigated by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center and revealed that Hamas leaders were upset that so many PIJ rockets were falling short inside of Gaza and killing Palestinians.
KAN noted that the senior Hamas official mentioned in the document, codenamed “Ahmed,” told Akram al-Ajouri, the head of PIJ’s al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the terror organization, "Your rockets are falling on people's homes in broad daylight, and this is happening again and again," during their Beirut meeting.
Ajouri: If a thousand are killed, that is the price of war
Ajouri reportedly replied, "We are at war. And even if a thousand people are killed by friendly fire, that is the price of war."
The document reportedly further revealed that, during the conversation, Ajouri admitted that PIJ knew its rockets had problems and that they were based on blueprints the organization received from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
PIJ’s rockets came under the international spotlight weeks after the start of the war in October 2023, when one of the organization’s rockets hit the al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza.
International media and terrorists in Gaza quickly blamed Israel for the incident, but it soon came to light that it was a PIJ rocket that struck the facility.
Days after the al-Ahli hospital incident, then-IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that, over the past day, over 550 rockets, one-fifth of those fired by Hamas and PIJ from Gaza in the 24-hour period, had landed within the strip.
Months later, in December 2023, the IDF stated a similar phenomenon was occurring in Lebanon.
The military said at the time that of the hundreds of rockets and missiles fired by Hezbollah at northern Israel, one in five fell short within Lebanese territory.
Yonah Jeremy Bob and Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman contributed to this report.