A senior Hamas terrorist has been quoted in the Quds Faras newspaper as saying that the security barrier in Judea and Samaria was one of the reasons that Hamas did not carry out a suicide bombing in an Israeli city for more than three years. The group was responsible for a bombing in August of 2004, and then did not carry out a suicide bombing attack within pre-1967 Israel until this week’s attack in Dimona.
The terrorist, Hamas advisor Yousef Rizka, said other factors leading to the lack of bombing attacks were the group’s struggles with other local terrorist groups, including Fatah, and the international community’s disapproval of attacks on innocent civilians.