GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – Hamas Spokesperson Hazem Qasem has asserted that the uprising in the Negev region demonstrates that the Zionist occupation regime cannot defeat the Palestinians despite using all of its “colonial tools”.
“Using all of its colonial tools, the Zionist Israeli occupation failed to uproot our people from the Negev,” Qasem avowed in a statement.
“Palestinian patriotism achieved clear progress against the Zionist colonial mechanisms,” he added, pointing to the Jewish National Fund (JNF)’s project to plant trees in the Negev region as a means of removing the Arabs from their lands.
“This is a continuous battle,” he expressed, adding, “It will never end without the victory of our people, who are the real owners of the land.”
On Friday, Adalah rights group disclosed that the Zionist police used “all brutal means” to suppress a legal demonstration organized on Thursday in the Negev. Adalah reported that the Zionist police detained a large number of protesters.
There are around 300 Palestinians who did not flee the Zionist occupation in 1948, living on five percent of their land, while the Zionist regime occupied 95 percent of it in 1948.
Arabs in the Negev region consist of Bedouin tribes living in villages scattered across the area. Many have been there since before the Zionist occupation.
Islamic Jihad has also thrown its weight behind Bedouin Palestinians in Negev in the face a forced eviction drive by the occupying regime, saying the resistance movement stands ready to defend the occupied region as it was the case during last year’s Gaza war.
Tariq Izz al-Din, a spokesperson for Islamic Jihad’s West Bank branch, made the remarks on Friday at a Gaza protest in solidarity with the Palestinian intifada (uprising) in Negev against the Zionist regime’s Judaization scheme.
“As long as the Palestinians are united and stand up against the occupying regime, all efforts by the Zionists to Judaize the Palestinian land will fail. In the course of the Operation Al-Quds Sword, all Palestine stood up against Israel,” he added, referring to the operation launched by resistance groups in Gaza in May 2021 in retaliation for the occupying regime’s bloody act of aggression.
“We will remain a single nation and land. The resistance is ready to defend Negev similar to the way that if defended its captives and inhabitants in Sheikh Jarrah. We will not take a neutral position and we will support the intifada of our countrymen in Negev.”
In addition to Gaza, a solidarity protest was held in the Arab-majority city of Umm al-Fahm on Friday.
“The issue of Negev is the issue of every Palestinian facing the policies of occupation and apartheid. Negev is not alone in this existential battle that he is facing,” one of the participants told Wafa news agency.