[3] An alliance of Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that it was carried out in reprisal for the assassinations of Hamas leaders Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abdelaziz Rantisi by the Israeli army some weeks earlier.

[4] On Sunday, May 2, 2004, Hatuel picked up her three oldest daughters from school and drove with them and their 2-year-old sister in the family station wagon towards her husband's workplace in Ashkelon to campaign against Israel's unilateral disengagement plan.

[10] Likud party members were voting that day in a legally non-binding, advisory referendum being conducted across Israel and in Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories on Ariel Sharon's disengagement proposal.

[9] The IDF killed both of the gunmen, identified as Ibrahim Mohammad Hammad (22), and Faisal Abu Naqira (26), reportedly from the Rafah refugee camp.

[2] The Popular Resistance Committees and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that it was carried out in reprisals for the assassinations of Hamas leaders Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abdelaziz Rantisi by the Israeli army earlier the same year and reportedly described it as "heroic".

[15] Following the attack, Israeli helicopters fired three missiles at a tower-block in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City that housed a radio station with links to Hamas which the IDF alleged had been broadcasting "incitement".

[12][13] Hours later, an Israeli air strike on a car in the West Bank city of Nablus killed four people described as members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades by Palestinian sources.

[13] On May 9, 2004, a week after the attack, two gunmen reportedly dressed in women's clothing, opened fire on about 200 to 300 people attending a heavily guarded memorial service on the Kissufim road in the southern Gaza Strip for Tali Hatuel and her daughters.

[17] The following day, on May 10, 2004, IDF troops shot dead a 22-year-old local Palestinian when Israeli bulldozers razed a row of homes and a four-storey block of flats was demolished in the Khan Yunis refugee camp a few hundred meters from where the attack took place.

[14][16] By May 10, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, 1,100 Palestinians had been made homeless by Israeli military raids in Gaza in what they described as "one of the most intense periods of destruction for years" and "illegal collective punishment" for the killing of Tali Hatuel and children.

[14] Near the end of May, during Operation Rainbow, the Israeli army demolished a building across the street from the home of Ibrahim Hammad, one of the perpetrators of the attack on the Hatuel family.

[20] On September 25, 2005, the Israeli Air Force killed the organizer of the attack, Sheikh Khalil, in a targeted assassination,[21][22] described by Islamic Jihad as one of its "most senior commanders in Palestine.

"[26] In Damascus, Ramadan Shallah, the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad said killing of Israeli women and children was permissible "because they decided spontaneously to go live in a war zone".

[14] The funeral, held in Ashkelon the same day as the attack, was attended by thousands of mourners including Moshe Katsav, the President of Israel at the time.