The Hamas movement has condemned what it refers to as the “crimes” of the Israeli police in the Negev, saying that Israeli practices point to growing institutionalised racism in the Jewish state. The recent deaths of two Palestinian men, Sami Al-Jaar and Sami Al-Zayadna, at the hands of Israeli police, have led to strikes by Israel’s Arab minority.
“We, the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, mourn Negev’s heroes Sami Al-Jaar and Sami Al-Zayadna who confronted, with their bare chests, the racism of the Zionist police,” Hamas said in a statement.
“The crimes that the occupation is committing against our people in the land of Palestine occupied in 1948 reflect a situation of growing racism in the Israeli entity, which encourages its leaders to provide Palestinian blood as a sacrifice for gaining Zionist votes in the Zionist elections,” the movement added.
“As we, in Hamas, mourn our people’s noble martyrs, we greet those who are steadfast on their land and those who have maintained their original identity and refused to surrender to the will of the usurper who occupied our land and our homes.”
In the statement, Hamas also issued a call to neighbouring “Arab countries to support our people who suffer oppression, occupation, siege and sacrilege.”
Sami Al-Jaar, 20, was shot dead by officers during a drugs raid which triggered protests in the southern town of Rahat last Thursday. At Jaar’s funeral on Sunday, 45-year-old Sami Al-Zayadna died as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets toward thousands of angry mourners.
Israel’s Arab Palestinian minority closed shops and schools from the northern Galilee to the southern Negev desert on Tuesday as part of a day-long strike to protest against the deaths.
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