ADDRESSING a national meeting of the leaders of Palestinian political factions in Gaza City on Saturday, Ismail Haniyah, the head of the Hamas political bureau, stressed that Hamas would make use of all its potential and capabilities to confront the American scheme, calling for unity among all Palestinian parties in the face of the ‘deal of the century’ plot.
Haniyah a senior leader of the Hamas resistance movement says Palestinians will never agree to US President Donald Trump’s reactionary proposals for a rotten peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, dubbed ‘the deal of the century’.
He added: ‘We will be able to achieve national unity and run our Palestinian homeland if there is great will and genuine intention. Our nation is utterly determined to protect the Palestinian cause. It is steadfast to deal with the “deal of the century”, no matter what the challenges or sacrifices could be.
He added: ‘The Palestinian nation will remain in the occupied territories and confront arrogance until we achieve freedom and independence.’
However, he warned that Washington was determined to liquidate the Palestinian cause and pointed to the fact that US President Donald Trump has formally recognised Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, seized from Syria by Israel in 1967.
He pointed out that the US is attempting to completely destroy the Palestinian cause through rejection of Palestinian refugees’ right of return, the abolition of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, giving the green light to Israel’s official annexation of settlements in the occupied West Bank, and fomenting a political rift between the Palestinian factions based in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Haniyah insisted that the political agenda of all Israeli parties was based on this ideology. Its essence was: ‘No to the return of Palestinian refugees, no to the establishment of a Palestinian state and no to al-Quds as the capital of Palestine.’
The senior Palestinian official then said Hamas was ready to enter talks with other Palestinian factions to form a national unity government that would insist that Palestinian land belonged only to Palestinians and that they would not give an inch of it to the occupying regime of Israel.
Haniyah also urged all Arab leaders to stop normalisation of diplomatic ties with Israel. He hailed the remarkable steadfastness of the Palestinian people in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Jerusalem.
The top Hamas official said that the Palestinian people have scored many victories throughout the past year, at the Great March of Return, inside the Israeli prisons, and in Jerusalem after foiling the Israeli attempts to close the al-Rahman Gate.
He added, Hamas has a vision to tackle the Israeli-American plan aimed at liquidating the Palestinian issue.
The Hamas chief stressed that the Palestinian people have to tackle the attempts to separate the Gaza Strip from the West Bank in order to prevent dividing Palestine geographically. The second point in Hamas’ vision is halting all forms of normalisation with the Israeli occupation.
‘We call on the Palestinian people and the Arab neighbours not to be a “bridge for the Israeli occupation”, Haniyah said.
Hamas called for holding the National Framework of the Palestinian Factions to agree on the ways to fight off the deal, organising a gathering outside of Palestine, and scrapping the Oslo Accords and getting out of its path which has reached a dead end.
Meanwhile, speaking in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh lashed out at Trump’s initiative, asserting that it was ‘born dead’. He noted that negotiations with the US were useless in the wake of the country’s relocation of its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem al-Quds, which Palestinians consider the capital city of their future state.
There is no doubt that NOW is the time for the formation of a National Unity Government, and for a mobilisation nationally and internationally to smash Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ and to go forward to the establishment of the State of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital and with all refugees having the right to return.
