GAZA (Dispatches) – The Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas has stressed that Zionist prisoners of war being held in Gaza will not be released except through a prisoner swap deal, Al Watan Voice reported.
Commenting on Zionist prime minister Yair Lapid and war minister Benny Gantz’s comments that no more work permits would be issued to Palestinian workers in Gaza except after the release of Zionist troops, Hamas spokesman Ismail Ridwan said: “The prisoner issue has nothing to do with any other issues.”
Ridwan reiterated that the release of Zionist prisoners would only happen when Palestinian prisoners are released from the Zionist regime’s jails.
Ridwan emphasized that his movement “could not be blackmailed through the issue of the prisoners because this issue is a national one.”
Meanwhile, the resistance movement said the years-long Zionist blockade of the Gaza Strip amounts to a crime against humanity.
“The Israeli occupation’s unjust siege on the Gaza Strip, imposed for more than 15 years, military offensives against it, the closure of the border crossings, and the denial of access to medicine and food that negatively affected innocent civilians and resulted in deteriorated Palestinians’ health and economic conditions and worsening crises, are heinous crimes against humanity that disregard international laws and norms,” Hamas said in a statement.
A United Nations report has brought to the fore the monumental toll the blockade has taken on the coastal enclave’s population. The report was released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on June 30.
About 2.1 million Palestinians in the besieged strip are “locked in,” with a vast majority unable to access the remainder of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the outside world, the UN report said. “In previous years, patients have died while awaiting a response to their application.”
The Zionist blockade has turned the enclave into an open-air prison since 2007.
Hamas call on Arab and Islamic nations as well as the international community to ramp up assistance in the reconstruction of Gaza.
On the seventeenth anniversary of the Zionist regime’s withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005, Hamas said the Palestinians would keep on the path of resistance until the occupied territories are liberated.