Terrorist groups across the Middle East have called for increased violence against Israeli civilians in the past 48 hours. The Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas has called for a resumption of suicide bombings against Israeli civilian targets, while the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has released five videos glorifying the knife attacks against Jews.

Hamas is encouraging its activists to escalate the violence against Israel, The Times of Israel reported Monday.

According to the Ynet news website on Monday, which quoted unnamed Israeli sources, Hamas activists in the West Bank cities of Hebron and Nablus have been instructed to blow themselves up in crowded spots in Israeli cities or West Bank settlements. Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, also has a lesser presence in the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank. …

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official in Gaza, said Sunday that it was necessary to turn the current round of violence into a full-fledged intifada (uprising) against Israel. Rather then stabbing civilians and soldiers with a knife — the weapon of choice among many perpetrators of recent attacks — al-Zahar urged Palestinians to begin using guns and explosives against Israeli targets as well.

Last week, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, urged further unrest and called for the “strengthening and increasing of the intifada.” Delivering a sermon for Muslim Friday prayers at a mosque in Gaza, Haniyeh said armed resistance was the “only path that will lead to liberation.”

The Times reported that Palestinian Authority security forces arrested six members of a Hamas cell on Sunday night, some of whom were in possession of explosives.

The Times also reported that ISIS has a released a series of videos praising the recent wave of violence committed against Israelis.

The videos, bearing such titles as “Project Behead the Jews” and “Message to the Mujahedin in Jerusalem,” were uploaded from sites under Islamic State control in Syria and northern Iraq. Some of the videos spread on social media and were accompanied by the hashtag #BeheadtheJew.

“I recommend that you take the path of Jihad, which God tells you to follow, I bless this jihad against the Jews. Strike fear in their hearts, they are the enemies of God,” a fighter says in one of the videos, according to a translation by the i24 news site.

“A victory is coming to the mujahedin of the Al-Aqsa [Mosque] from above, you are the ones who start but we will continue it,” another Islamic State member says as he holds an automatic rifle.

In his speech before the United Nations last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree.”

The Israel Project, which publishes The Tower, recently released a video highlighting the similarities between ISIS’s actions and Palestinian terror.

[Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash 90 ]