Hamas Vows to Boost Defensive Capabilities, Military Strength to Confront Israel on Multiple Fronts
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Hamas will not remain silent in the face of Israel’s ever-growing aggression and settlement expansion across the occupied Palestinian territories, the Palestinian resistance movement said.
In a statement released on the 13th anniversary of the 2008-2009 war on Gaza, Hamas said to sit idly was not permitted while Israel 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 Israel 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 Israel’s settlement activities and its planned eviction of Palestinian families from their ancestral homes.
Palestinian groups and activists have warned that Israel’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 Israeli 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 Israeli authorities to learn a lesson 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. Israel 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.
In its most recent aggression, Tel Aviv launched a brutal bombing campaign against Gaza on May 10. Apparently caught off guard by the unprecedented barrage of rockets from Gaza, Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire on May 21, which Palestinian resistance movements accepted with Egyptian mediation.
