A LEADING delegation from the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has met with the Secretary-General of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to discuss the latest bout of Israeli aggression in the Palestinian territories.
The delegation, led by the deputy head of the movement’s political bureau, Saleh al-Arouri, met and exchanged views on Saturday with Nasrallah and other Hezbollah officials on the latest events in Palestine, particularly Israel’s violations against Palestinians and the regime’s attacks on the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem.
Sheikh Jarrah has been the scene of frequent crackdowns by Israeli forces on protesters against the planned expulsion of dozens of Palestinian families from their homes in favour of Israeli settler groups.
Since Israel seized East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, Israeli settler organisations have claimed ownership of the land in Sheikh Jarrah and have filed multiple lawsuits to force Palestinians out of the area.
Much of the international community considers the Israeli settlement structures illegal under international law because they are built on occupied territory.
The latest clashes erupted after a racist Israeli lawmaker and his supporters sneaked into Sheikh Jarrah.
On Saturday Hezbollah and Hamas also discussed ‘the horizon of the existing conflict between the Axis of Resistance and the temporary Zionist entity,’ as well as the latest political situation in the region.
The participants stressed the stability and solidity of the Axis of Resistance in the face of all pressures and threats, saying: ‘Great hopes were placed on it.’
The two sides pointed to the strength of the relationship between Hezbollah and Hamas, and underlined the expansion of cooperation and coordination between the two parties.
They reiterated their rejection of the entire agreements opposing the Palestinian cause, calling on those countries which have ‘normalised’ relations with Israel to reverse their course as the move ‘harms the Palestinian cause and only serves the Zionist entity.’
They also hailed Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails as individuals who are waging a new battle against the occupying regime, and called for solidarity with the prisoners.
Israeli jail authorities keep Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions with no proper hygienic standards.
Palestinian inmates have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.
There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians currently held in Israeli jails. Hundreds of them have been incarcerated without charge. Some prisoners have been held in so-called ‘administrative detention’ for up to 11 years.
Palestinians and human rights groups worldwide say ‘administrative detention’ violates the right to due process since inmates are held for lengthy periods without being charged, tried, or convicted.
The Palestinian prisoners’ organisations have announced that prisoners from all Palestinian factions will now stage a mass open-ended hunger strike against these abusive conditions.
They are also threatening to set fire to Israeli jails and detention centres all across the occupied territories in protest against the Israeli prison authorities’ repressive measures.
Meanwhile, four Palestinians were injured when Israeli occupation forces attacked a peaceful protest in the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians protested on Sunday at the entrance to the village of Luban e-Sharkiya, to the south of Nablus.
Yaaqoub Eweis, the mayor of the village, said Israeli forces assaulted dozens of protesters who were demonstrating against the daily attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers on the village’s students and the restrictions imposed on them.
Eweis said four of the protesters sustained minor injuries, while many others suffered breathing problems due to the inhalation of teargas fired by the Israeli forces.
Palestinian students have lost access to their schools in the village as a result of attacks by Israeli settlers and troops.
Last week, hundreds of students in the village were forced to miss school after a group of Israeli settlers gathered for a dance at the entrance to the village, blocking access to the two main schools.
Elsewhere in the occupied territories, members of the Shawamreh family were forced to start demolishing their own home, which is on the outskirts of the Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina, after they were ordered to do so by the all-Israeli municipality of the city.
The demolition came after Israeli authorities refused to recognise the Palestinian family’s claims to the land.
The Tel Aviv regime has been building settlements on Palestinian territory ever since the 1967 war and occupation.
The move has been condemned by the United Nations and is considered illegal under international law, which bans construction on occupied lands.
- The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas says al-Quds (Jerusalem) will remain Palestine’s capital forever, dismissing claims by France’s Prime Minister Jean Castex.
Castex, speaking for a Jewish representative organisation in France, had said that occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds was the all time capital of the Jews.
Hamas said the French prime minister’s words will not give Israel any legitimacy, adding they will only encourage the regime to increase its aggression towards Jerusalem al-Quds and the holy sites that belong to Muslims and Christians.
The group also said Israel’s racist behaviour and occupation of Palestine is illegal under every international law including those of the European Union.
Separately, Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance movements warned Israel over the continuing brutal siege against the impoverished Gaza Strip and the regime’s land expropriation and illegal settlements expansion activities in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
The two movements made the warning during a meeting that brought together their senior officials in the Lebanese capital city of Beirut on Friday, the Arabic service of Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency reported.
‘The continuation of the occupying Israeli regime’s settlement projects in the occupied West Bank and al-Quds (Jerusalem), and its continued siege of the Gaza Strip cannot be tolerated, and the Palestinian resistance front cannot allow the situation to continue as it is,’ they stressed in a joint statement.
The Gaza Strip, home to some two million Palestinians, has been under an all-out Israeli siege since June 2007.
The tight blockade has caused living standards to crash, as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.
And the Israeli regime has refused to cooperate with a United Nations probe investigating the crimes it committed during the Gaza war last May.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law as they are built on occupied land. The United Nations Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.
In their talks over the weekend, Hamas and Islamic Jihad also underlined the need ‘to achieve national Palestinian unity, on the basis of partnership, restructure and development of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), and an agreement on a national struggle campaign against Israel.’
The European Union spokesperson in Jerusalem has also said the attacks committed by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians violate international law.
The resistance groups also expressed their opposition to the Tel Aviv regime’s flagrant violations of Palestinian prisoners’ rights, and warned the Israeli authorities against the grave consequences of their practices.
Their declaration was immediately followed by the announcement by Palestinian prisoners from all factions of an open-ended hunger strike and struggle against the appalling and illegal conditions they are subjected to in Israeli jails.
