Hamas still wants to liberate all of Palestine

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar said on Friday that his movement’s goal is not simply freeing the Gaza Strip from Israel’s military occupation, but also the liberation of the whole of Palestine, Quds Press has reported.

Speaking to worshippers in a mosque in Gaza after the Friday prayer, Al-Zahar said, “If we could set up a national authority, autonomous body or civil administration in any area in Palestine, it does not mean that we will concede any particle of Palestinian land.”

He accused the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of undermining efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip. Half of the Kuwaiti donations meant for Gaza reconstruction have been taken by the PA head, Al-Zahar claimed.

The PA president has lost his legitimacy, the Hamas official pointed out, not least because he has “conspired against his people, accepted settlements, called Arab states to strike Gaza and described as ‘divine’ security cooperation with the occupation.” Al-Zahar put the blame for the death of former prisoner Ja’far Awad in Hebron, and the death of his cousin in the Israeli attack on his funeral, squarely at the door of Abbas. He called Awad’s death a “war crime” because the Israeli authorities refused him proper medical treatment, releasing him only when his condition became desperate.

“Security cooperation with the Israeli occupation is the cause of the suffering of the Palestinians,” Al-Zahar insisted, “and the PA carries out this devilish security cooperation with Israel.”