‘LET Christmas celebrations be a global occasion to intensify all forms of global solidarity, to stop the Zionist aggression on Gaza,’ the Hamas Movement said in a statement on New Year’s Eve.
It added, ‘We in the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) call on the free peoples of the world, marking Christmas, to translate their celebrations into mass action against the genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement committed by the Zionist occupation against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip over the course of 15 months.’
Hamas continue: ‘Let these celebrations be a global occasion to continue and intensify all forms of rallies in the capitals, and cities’ squares across the world, to express rejection and condemnation of the ongoing Zionist aggression on Gaza, and to exert pressure on the occupation and its backers until this brutal war against more than two million Palestinians in Gaza stops, and to protect humanity from the evil of the occupation that threatens humanity and international peace and security.’
Israel has been waging a bloody war on the Gaza Strip for the past 15 months killing and injuring almost 154,000 Palestinian citizens, most of them women and children (60%). Thousands are missing amidst the vast destruction to infrastructure and buildings in the beleaguered enclave and a man-made famine that has killed many children and elderly.
The son of the Director General of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, has appealed to the world to take immediate action to release his father, who was arrested by Israeli occupation forces on Friday after storming the hospital, burning it down and forcibly evacuating everyone who was in it.
Idris Abu Safiya said in a video recording: ‘We are broadcasting this message burdened with pain and concern for the fate of my father who was arrested last Friday by Israeli occupation forces while fulfilling his humanitarian duty in the northern Gaza Strip.
‘During this period, my father lost his beloved son, my brother Ibrahim, and he himself was seriously injured and is still suffering from the injury until this moment. Despite that, my father continued to fulfil his duty with all sincerity,’ Idris added.
He stressed that his family, friends and colleagues are all concerned about his fate ‘as he is held in the Israeli Sde Teiman prison, known for its crimes against Palestinian prisoners’, adding: ‘We have received testimonies from released detainees confirming that my father was subjected to humiliation and mistreatment, including being forced to take off all his clothes during a humiliating search.’
Idris appealed to international bodies and human rights organisations, especially the World Health Organisation and ‘everyone with a living conscience’, to take urgent and immediate action to pressure Israeli occupation authorities to release his father before he meets the fate of many doctors and medics in the Gaza Strip who were martyred during arrest.
The Hamas Movement said the martyrdom of five Palestinian detainees in Israeli occupation prisons in the past hours exposes the Israeli occupation’s ugliest face of brutality and confirms its complete detachment from all human values and international laws, amidst suspicious international silence and inability to hold it accountable for escalating its crimes against Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas stressed, in a statement on Monday evening, that the serious violations Palestinian prisoners are exposed to, including enforced disappearance, medical neglect, systematic torture, and deprivation of the most basic rights, are a direct result of the blatant US bias and the absence of real international deterrence.
Hamas called on the masses of the Palestinian people to go out in mass rallies to support the prisoners’ steadfastness in the face of the Israeli occupation’s attacks, especially with the escalation of ethnic cleansing crimes and the war of extermination launched against the Gaza Strip.
The Movement called on all international human rights organisations to condemn the Israeli occupation and prosecute its leaders before international courts to hold them accountable for their crimes targeting prisoners and the entire Palestinian people.
The US, EU and UK trade union leaders cannot just stand idly by watching the slaughter. They must immediately call general strikes to bring down the governments that are supporting Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians and bring in Workers Governments that will recognise the state of Palestine.
