GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – A senior Hamas official hit out at the Palestinian Authority (PA) for fraternizing the Zionist regime and said the escalation of the situation in the occupied West Bank is similar to the lead-up to the war in the Gaza Strip last year.
“There are two approaches among the Palestinians. A major part resists the occupying regime, but the other front, namely the Palestinian Authority, is Israel’s mercenary and has normalized its relations with the regime,” Mahmoud al-Zahar, a member of the Gaza-based movement’s leadership, told Iran’s al-Alam Arabic-language television.
The first front, he said, is ready to make all sacrifices to expel the occupying regime from the entire Palestine, but the latter does not believe in Palestine’s liberation.
Last year, during Operation Sword of Al-Quds, Gaza’s resistance groups rose up in arms in support of the Palestinians who were bearing the brunt of the Zionist aggression in the West Bank.
Al-Zahar reminded how the operation, during which the resistance groups fired thousands of rockets into the occupied territories, managed to scuttle the Zionist regime’s security doctrine.
He said Arab countries’ failure to back up Palestine in the face of the occupying regime’s aggression and the West’s all-out support of the regime led to the emergence of a new status quo in Arab relations with the regime.
The official was apparently referring to some regional Arab states’ decision to normalize ties with Tel Aviv through United States-brokered deals, which Palestinian groups slammed as a “stab in the back” of Palestine.
“The situation has, however, drastically changed. There was a time when they used to say that the West Bank is weak, while today the experiences of Gaza are repeating themselves in the West Bank,” he said, pointing to Palestinians’ uprising against the regime’s aggression in the occupied territory.
The Hamas official said the oil crisis after the war in Ukraine has significantly changed the situation of the countries, which used to support the Israeli regime.
“The countries that used to support the Israeli regime have now been afflicted with weakness and bewilderment,” he said.