Ex-advisor to UAE Crown Prince calls to ‘liberate’ Gaza from Hamas

A former adviser to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, has called for the international community to “liberate” the Gaza Strip from Hamas, which he said was “an occupation government in Gaza”.

“Has Hamas become a government of occupation in the Gaza Strip? It is time to liberate Gaza from Hamas occupation and oppression,” Abdullah said on Twitter.

Abdullah’s remarks caused angry reactions on social media with many users calling on him to focus on liberating the occupied city of Jerusalem from Israel rather than Gaza from Hamas.

Earlier, a member of the central committee the Fatah movement, Azzam Al-Ahmad, also criticised Hamas, calling it “an occupation government”. Al-Ahmad called for cutting off the Gaza Strip and declaring it a rebel territory.

“The Gaza Strip is like an airplane hijacked by a group of armed militias, and the kidnappers either have to pay the price step by step or end the kidnapping,” he said.

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“Hamas is more dangerous than the occupation, and was born outside the national front,”he added during an interview with a local TV channel.

Al-Ahmad’s remarks were also widely criticised by social media users who described him as a “traitor”.

The Palestinian Authority, headed by Fatah, has tightened an Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip. Hamas beat Fatah in the 2006 elections however Fatah refused to hand over power to the democratically elected movement and has since piled pressure on it to step down by suffocating Palestinians in Gaza in the hope that they will revolve and overthrow the government there.