Haniyeh Nakba speech calls for honesty with reconciliation agreement

The Palestinian Prime Minister in Gaza has stressed the importance of implementing the reconciliation agreement with assiduousness and honesty. Ismail Haniyeh called on all Arab states to provide political, financial and military support for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Speaking after dawn prayers at Al-Omari Mosque in Gaza to mark the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba (Catastrophe of the creation of the state of Israel), Mr. Haniyeh told the congregation that Palestinian unity and the Arab revolutions in the region signal the imminent liberation of Occupied Palestine. Hamas, he said, is keen for the reconciliation agreement to be a success. Mr Haniyeh had invited Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to make Sunday’s dawn prayer a “million-man” event in commemoration of the Nakba.

---

“The liberation project needs Palestinian and Arab leadership to support armed resistance and lead the Arab nation toward victory as well as provide support for the Palestinian people,” said the Prime Minister. “Programmes and goals might differ from one faction to the other, but they must coexist for the sake of achieving liberation from the Zionist occupation.”

Substantial changes have restored the spirit of the Palestine cause, notably the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas, he added, as well as Nakba commemoration in Palestine, across the region and internationally.

“Palestinian awareness and holding on to the basics of the cause, including refugees’ right of return to their land from which they were driven in 1948’s act of ethnic cleansing, invalidates the so-called ‘Geneva agreement’ signed by Palestinian and Israeli negotiators.” That agreement basically sought to negate the right of return.

The revolutions sweeping across the Arab states are, said Mr. Haniyeh, “positive developments which will have a great impact on the Palestine cause”.

He continued: “We are witnessing one of the omens of victory, with the transformation of the Arab nation and a change of methodology towards the rejection of tyranny and the choice of mosques and the dawn prayer being held in public squares.” This, he added, has produced regimes attached to the will of the people, who have been enslaved for many decades.