Palestinian al-Quds Brigades unveils new rocket named after fallen commander Bahaa Abu al-Ata

The new rocket, dubbed Baha Abu al-Ata, was put on display during a mass ceremony attended by thousands of the group’s supporters in Gaza City on Friday evening.

Abu al-Ata and his wife were killed in an Israeli air raid targeting their home in the Gaza Strip on November 12, 2019.

Medics and local sources said at the time that the raid in Gaza’s Shejaiya neighborhood also wounded four of their children and a neighbor. The killings triggered clashes between Israeli forces and Gaza-based Palestinian resistance fighters.

According to Islamic Jihad, Abu al-Ata was one of the most prominent members of its military wing and played a major role in carrying out operations against Israel.

Separately, a high-ranking Israeli army general said on Friday that the regime’s military forces will bypass some areas in the occupied territories while transporting ground forces to future war fronts.

Major-General Yitzhak Turgeman, chief of logistics for Israel's military, said the army had marked out 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) of dirt tracks, which could act as wartime alternatives to roads, and had set up new anti-riot units to protect convoys.

“I'm really concerned about... the impact of violent disturbances on internal security and movement of transport convoys,” Turgeman told the Hebrew-language Maariv daily newspaper in an interview.

The remarks came after video clips appeared on social media, showing army vehicles wending through Umm al-Fahm city, located 20 kilometers (12 miles) northwest of Jenin, during a drill.

The local municipality issued an open letter, condemning the presence of Israeli military forces in the area as “unacceptable and hurtful to residents' feelings.”