GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – Palestine’s Hamas resistance movement says it will not remain silent in the face of the Zionist regime’s aggression and settlement expansion across the occupied Palestinian territories.
In a statement released on the 13th anniversary of the 2008-2009 war on Gaza, Hamas said it will not sit idly was not permitted while the occupying regime accelerated its Judaization campaign and settlement activities in occupied Al-Quds and the West Bank.
Hamas pledged to build up its defensive capabilities and military strength to confront the occupying regime on multiple fronts.
“The option of comprehensive resistance, especially the armed struggle and the popular uprising against the occupation, is the optimal way to extract the usurped Palestinian rights, liberate the land, defend the Palestinian people and curb the Israeli aggression and crimes,” the statement read.
It also called on the international community to hold the regime accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian nation.
“The occupation’s crimes against our Palestinian people, their land and their holy sites will not abate by prescription and its perpetrators will be tried as war criminals sooner or later,” Hamas said.
Tensions have been running high in the occupied territories for months over the occupying regime’s settlement activities and its planned eviction of Palestinian families from their ancestral homes.
Palestinian groups and activists have warned that the regime’s treatment of the Palestinians and its settler assaults in the occupied West Bank will lead to a new Intifada (uprising).
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has also stepped up its criticism of the regime in the wake of the growing violence by its troops and settlers in the West Bank.
Tel Aviv has been criticized for its extensive use of lethal force and extrajudicial killing of Palestinians who do not pose an immediate threat to its forces or settlers.
Elsewhere in the statement, Hamas said the recent ‘Operation al-Quds Sword’ has been the best response to the regime’s violent behavior in the occupied territories, calling on regime authorities to learn from their defeat against resistance groups during the latest aggression.
Tel Aviv imposed an all-out land, aerial, and ground siege against the Gaza Strip in 2007 after Hamas rose to power in the enclave. The occupying regime has also been controlling Gazans’ access to their basic necessities through the siege.
Israel has also launched four major wars against the enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans each time and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.