WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance movements have highlighted the need to boost unity and escalate military confrontation with the Zionist regime amid a new wave of aggression against Palestinians by the occupying regime.
A meeting was held in the Lebanese capital of Beirut between a Hamas delegation led by Fathi Hammad, a member of the group’s political bureau, and an Islamic Jihad delegation led by secretary-general Ziad al-Nakhala.
The sides affirmed that the liberation of Palestinian lands at this stage requires efforts to unify resistance forces, escalate the confrontation with the occupying forces, and force the regime to retreat from all Palestinian soil, Palestine Today reported.
They also stressed that Al-Quds is the “eternal capital” of Palestine and will remain a symbol of unity for the Palestinian people.
The meeting comes a few days after a historic visit between Hamas officials and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.
A high-ranking Palestinian delegation met with Assad on Wednesday, in the first such visit in more than a decade as the two sides seek to revitalize their ties.
Deputy chief of the Hamas political bureau in the besieged Gaza Strip, Khalil al-Hayya, who headed the delegation, said the spirit of resistance was resurrected within the Arab world following their historic visit to Damascus.
Meanwhile, a leading figure of the Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank said the new West Bank resistance Lions’ Den is uniting the resistance.
The Lions’ Den (Areen al-Ossoud in Arabic) is demonstrating that resistance is more important than any single movement, said Khader Adnan, 44, who has been jailed several times.
“These young men are not under the patronage of any faction. They are demonstrating that resistance is more important than any single movement,” he told AFP.
In light of the rise in the number of Palestinians killed in 2022 in the West Bank, which reached 155 as reported by the UN, Adnan said, “This could be the start of a new intifada.”
The death toll is the heaviest in the West Bank in the past seven years and is also the second highest since the end of the second “intifada” or uprising of the early 2000s.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh commented on the rise of the resistance group, telling AFP that the fight would continue from “generation to generation, sacrifice to sacrifice,” saying Israel has intensified its occupation since 1967.
The developments come as Zionist settlers have carried out more than 100 violent attacks against Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank over the past 10 days, amid tensions escalated by the regime’s forces in the occupied territories.
The regime’s media reported that the West Bank had seen an “alarming” rise in attacks by Zionist settlers against Palestinian civilians, homes, and storefronts in recent weeks, with more than 100 cases of crimes by Jewish settlers in the last 10 days.
“In recent weeks, the security establishment has identified an alarming increase in acts of violence by settlers throughout the West Bank,” Haaretz daily newspaper said, adding that most of the attacks had taken place in the northern West Bank, especially in the town of Huwwara in Nablus.
Last week, dozens of settlers attacked Palestinian property and vehicles in the Huwwara, with witnesses telling the Middle East Eye that masked settlers threw rocks at Palestinian vehicles near the town, as well as setting vehicles and olive trees on fire. Over 40 Palestinians were reported wounded.