CAIRO, April 15 — Iran’s attack on Israel drew applause from many Palestinians in Gaza yesterday as rare payback for the Israeli offensive on their enclave, although some said they suspected Tehran had staged the assault more for show than to inflict real damage.
Many in Gaza have felt abandoned by Middle East neighbours since Israel began an offensive that has killed more than 33,000 people in response to attacks on Israeli soil by Hamas, who killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostage on October 7.However support has come from Iran and its regional proxies, who are allies of Gaza’s Hamas Islamist rulers. Syria and Yemen’s Houthi group called the Iranian strike legitimate. Iran’s ally Hezbollah in Lebanon praised the attack as “brave”.
Iran launched the attack over a suspected Israeli strike on its embassy compound in Syria on April 1 that killed top Revolutionary Guards commanders and followed months of clashes between Israel and Iran’s regional allies, triggered by the war in Gaza.Hamas, which has been locked in a war with Israel in Gaza since October 7, defended Iran’s attack, saying in a statement the assault was “a natural right and a deserved response” to the strike on the Iranian embassy compound.
“Curtains down on the face-saving piece of theatre ... The Palestinian people are the only ones who pay the price with their flesh and blood,” Munir al-Gaghoub, a resident of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, wrote on his Facebook page.