GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – The Palestinian Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, says anti-occupation protests in the Gaza Strip will continue despite the Zionist regime's aggression against the besieged enclave.
Head of Hamas Political Bureau Ismail Haniyeh said on Sunday that demonstrations would go on until the fulfillment of the Palestinian people's demands, including their right to return to their homeland.
He added that the illegal settlement constructions and forced evacuations would fail to make Palestinians back down.
The senior Hamas leader said the Palestinian people would never change their stance on al-Quds, reiterating that the city and all other occupied territories belong to Palestinians.
Haniyeh's remarks came a day after a United Nations aid agency official said Palestinians in the Gaza Strip "have nothing to lose” as a ceasefire between the Zionist regime and the Palestinian resistance groups, following the regime’s heavy bombardment of the territory and Hamas's retaliatory rocket fire a day earlier.
"There is no tomorrow in Gaza, it’s a big prison, there are no dreams, there is no stability. Two million people, 50 percent unemployment, the private sector doesn’t work,” he said in an interview with Ynet, the online arm of Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronot on Saturday.
Tel Aviv has most recently ratcheted up its attacks against Gaza, taking it under dozens of airstrikes, while claiming that it is responding to rocket fire from the territory.
Also on Saturday, it was reported that the regime and Gaza-based resistance groups had reached a "ceasefire agreement.” Only hours afterwards, however, the regime resumed its attacks again alleging that it had come under renewed rocket strikes.
In a latest development, at least two Palestinians sustained injuries when Zionist fighter jets launched an airstrike against a residential area in the northern part of the Gaza Strip as the Tel Aviv regime continues with its acts of aggression against the impoverished coastal sliver.
Local sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arabic-language Ma’an news agency that the warplanes had attacked a site allegedly used for releasing incendiary kites and balloons into occupied territories.
The development came less than a day after Hamas said it had reached a ceasefire with the regime after a wave of Zionist airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, and dozens of rockets fired from the Palestinian enclave in response.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the Palestinian resistance movement had agreed to an "Egyptian offer to return to a ceasefire to stop this escalation."
The Islamic Jihad Movement also accepted the agreement with the regime.
Daoud Shiha, a spokesman for the movement, said the ceasefire came into force by 8.00 p.m. local time (1700 GMT) on Saturday.
Palestinian fighters will abide by the ceasefire as long as Israel does, Shiha highlighted.