Prominent Hamas leader says Israeli arrest of Palestinians fuels resistance

On Tuesday, a prominent member of Hamas’ political bureau, Moussa Abu-Marzouk, downplayed the effectiveness of Israel’s detention of Palestinians in its attempt to stifle the resistance.

“This is the way to a third intifada,” he wrote on his Facebook page in response to the detention campaign against his movement’s leaders and members in the occupied West Bank.

Abu-Marzouk reiterated that the “brigade of resistance remains high, despite the ongoing detention campaigns carried out by the Israeli occupation in the past and present.”

He continued: “The Israeli occupation previously arrested minors, including both male and female Palestinians, for example Lama Hadayda and Montaha Al-Heeh, as well as many other women. It arrested Ikrema Sweedan, 8, Farahat Al-Rajabi, 9, and Loai Syam, 10, last month.”

The occupation also regularly arrests Hamas parliamentarians. “It recently arrested Nizar Ramadhan and Mohamed Badr, as well as the university professor Adnan Abu-Tabbana,” he wrote.

The plight of “all those arrested recently, in addition to those who are already in prison, have not intimidated Palestinians or affected their will to regain their rights,” he said. In fact, he pointed out how the opposite is true: “thousands of detentions and hundreds of martyrs only reinforce the spirit of regaining our land and holy places.”

Abu-Marzouk stressed that this “oppression only fuels greater and renewed resistance.”

It is worth mentioning that a Palestinian detained in an Israeli jail was declared dead today at dawn. He had suffered cancer and was denied the right to proper treatment.

After his health condition deteriorated, he was finally admitted to hospital. But while he remained for 20 days under intensive care, it was already too late to save his life.