HAMAS has denounced the ‘normalisation deals’ with Israel, because they are aimed at legitimatising the regime in the Middle East and forging an alliance with Tel Aviv.
In a statement released last Saturday evening, the resistance movement described the so-called Abraham Accords, struck by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and several other Arab countries with Israel, as ‘very dangerous’.
The agreements, it said, seek to assert the Israeli regime’s military, political and economic hegemony over the region, plunder its wealth, marginalise the Palestinian cause, and isolate the Palestinian nation from the rest of the Arab and Muslim world.
The movement warned that the normalisation agreements affect the aspirations of Arab and Muslim countries just as much as the Palestinian people, and jeopardise their national security.
Bahrain’s main opposition group, al-Wefaq, has also condemned the Al Khalifah regime’s normalisation deal with Israel as a crime, and which does not reflect the will of the public.
Hamas condemned the Abraham Accords as a Zionist-American project aimed at fomenting tensions between Muslim and Arab countries so as to sideline the Middle East conflict, and divert attention from the struggle against Israel as the occupier of Palestinian lands and the greatest threat to the region.
The agreements, Hamas said, seek to exhaust the Palestinian nation’s resilience, and marginalise Palestinians and their resistance forces as well as anyone who supports them and stands with them.
They aim to give Israel a free hand to advance its expansionist projects of expropriating Palestinian lands, Judaising occupied East Jerusalem (al-Quds), demolishing Palestinian buildings and homes, displacing Palestinians and expanding settlements, it said.
Hamas also called on those countries that have signed these normalisation accords with Israel to correct their wrong political approach and instead align themselves with the anti-Zionist ideals of the regional nations.
The movement finally called for a strong and effective strategy to confront all the projects aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause – foremost among which are the so-called Abraham Accords and the ‘the deal of century’ crafted by former US president Donald Trump.
These ‘normalisation deals’ were agreed when former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed them with Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani during an official ceremony hosted by Trump at the White House on September 15 2020.
In January 2001, Sudan’s ruling military junta also officially signed the Abraham Accords to normalise ties with Israel.
Then on December 10th last year the Moroccan monarchy signed a deal – brokered by the United States – to normalise relations, and Israel has started up direct flights to Marrakesh which have been loudly condemned by Moroccan social media activists.
Palestinians, who are fighting against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and for their independent state with East Jerusalem (al-Quds) as its capital, condemn these ‘normalisation deals as a betrayal of their cause.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has officially inaugurated its embassy in Israel, less than a year after the two sides agreed to establish formal relations under the US-brokered deal.
The inauguration ceremony last Wednesday was hosted by UAE’s Ambassador to Israel, Mohammad al-Khaja, with the regime’s President Isaac Herzog also in attendance.
The embassy is situated, not in Jerusalem, but in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange building, also known as the Bursa.
Israel opened its embassy in the Emirati capital in late June. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid inaugurated the Israeli embassy in Abu Dhabi and the Israeli consulate in Dubai during a two-day visit.
Israel and the UAE have signed a raft of deals in various areas, ranging from tourism to aviation and financial services, since they signed the normalisation agreement in August last year.
Israeli ministers had previously visited the UAE, but Lapid is the most senior Israeli diplomat to have made the trip, and the first to travel on an official mission.
The Islamic Jihad has denounced the UAE for granting citizenship to 5,000 Israelis.
In March, a planned official visit by then Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the UAE was cancelled due to a ‘dispute’ with Jordan over the use of its airspace, according to Israeli officials.
A member of the Palestinian Fatah movement’s Central Committee has condemned Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) as ‘a traitor’ to the Palestinian cause, and demanded the United Arab Emirates be expelled from the Arab League following their normalisation deal with Israel.
Abbas Zaki warned if the UAE’s doors are opened to ‘naturalise the Zionists, you will perish.
‘The people of the Emirates are free and great and we do not attribute this betrayal to them, because the only traitor is Mohammed bin Zayed,’ Zaki stated.
Separately, senior European ambassadors to Israel, including German and French officials, boycotted an Independence Day ceremony on July 4th at the United States embassy in occupied Jerusalem al-Quds.
According to a report by the Jerusalem Post, the ambassadors ‘decided not to attend the event because their countries consider Jerusalem al-Quds to be an occupied city.’
Those who did take part in the ceremony reportedly included ambassadors from Romania and the United Kingdom, as well as Kosovo, Australia, Norway, and Canada.
Trump sparked controversy by officially recognising Jerusalem al-Quds as the Israeli ‘capital’ in December 2017, before moving the US embassy there from Tel Aviv in May 2018.
Guatemala and Paraguay later followed in Washington’s footsteps, but the latter reversed its decision after just four months.
Israel lays claim to the entire city of Jerusalem al-Quds, but the international community views the city’s eastern sector as occupied territory and Palestinians claim it as the capital of their future state.
- In a report last Sunday, the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said Israeli forces have detained more than 100 Palestinians since the daring jailbreak from the Gilboa prison on September 6th.
The highly fortified maximum security jail is located in the northern part of the occupied territories, and the six prisoners escaped through an underground tunnel which they dug with a spoon.
‘We have documented an average of 14 arrests per day in the occupied West Bank since the men escaped,’ Milena Ansari from Addameer told Al Jazeera. ‘This does not include the Palestinians arrested within Israel.’
Israel launched a campaign of mass arrests and raids in the occupied cities of Ramallah, al-Khalil, Nablus and surrounding villages following the prison break.
A number of Palestinian children were also swept up in the latest wave of arrests.
Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank have also arrested more relatives of the six Palestinian escapees.
In the predawn hours of September 6th, Zakaria Zubeidi, a former commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in Jenin and five Islamic Jihad members tunnelled their way out through their cell’s drainage system and escaped from Gilboa prison.
Four of the Islamic Jihad members were serving life sentences, while the fifth had been held without charge for two years under a so-called administrative detention order, according to Israeli media.
Over 4,500 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons then faced a repressive campaign by the Tel Aviv regime in the wake of the escape.
The Israel Prison Service (IPS) forced many Palestinian prisoners into solitary confinement and restricted their access to essential services.
Last Saturday, Israeli media outlets reported that four of the escapees had been arrested in the northern part of the occupied territories.
Following the arrests last week, thousands of Palestinians held protests across the occupied West Bank in support of the six prisoners, particularly those who’d been recaptured.
The protests were held amid fears of an Israeli retaliation that has already repressed hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners.
The heroic jailbreak has come as a huge embarrassment to Tel Aviv and exposed fault lines in its much-hyped security and intelligence apparatus. The Gilboa prison is one of the most highly-fortified detention centres in Israel.
The Palestinian resistance groups and several political factions have warned Israel against harming or endangering the life of any Palestinian prisoner.
On Sunday, the Israeli ministry of military affairs said that the two remaining Palestinian prisoners had been apprehended early in the morning in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
It said the two Palestinians ‘were caught alive’, surrendering without resistance after troops encircled their building.
But Palestinian media outlets said there were exchanges of gunfire during the pre-dawn raid by Israeli special forces.
Palestine’s WAFA news agency reported on Sunday that the Israeli soldiers fired live bullets at protesters during the clashes which erupted in the neighbourhood following the raid, injuring at least two who had to be hospitalised.
Two other Palestinians, reportedly Jenin residents, were also arrested in the raid, including a physically disabled man.
Prison authorities keep Palestinian inmates under deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards. The prisoners have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment and repression.
Human rights organisations say Israel violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians currently being held in Israeli jails.
Hundreds of them have been incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention where Palestinians are held indefinitely without charge or trial.
endsHAMAS has denounced the ‘normalisation deals’ with Israel, because they are aimed at legitimatising the regime in the Middle East and forging an alliance with Tel Aviv.
In a statement released last Saturday evening, the resistance movement described the so-called Abraham Accords, struck by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and several other Arab countries with Israel, as ‘very dangerous’.
The agreements, it said, seek to assert the Israeli regime’s military, political and economic hegemony over the region, plunder its wealth, marginalise the Palestinian cause, and isolate the Palestinian nation from the rest of the Arab and Muslim world.
The movement warned that the normalisation agreements affect the aspirations of Arab and Muslim countries just as much as the Palestinian people, and jeopardise their national security.
Bahrain’s main opposition group, al-Wefaq, has also condemned the Al Khalifah regime’s normalisation deal with Israel as a crime, and which does not reflect the will of the public.
Hamas condemned the Abraham Accords as a Zionist-American project aimed at fomenting tensions between Muslim and Arab countries so as to sideline the Middle East conflict, and divert attention from the struggle against Israel as the occupier of Palestinian lands and the greatest threat to the region.
The agreements, Hamas said, seek to exhaust the Palestinian nation’s resilience, and marginalise Palestinians and their resistance forces as well as anyone who supports them and stands with them.
They aim to give Israel a free hand to advance its expansionist projects of expropriating Palestinian lands, Judaising occupied East Jerusalem (al-Quds), demolishing Palestinian buildings and homes, displacing Palestinians and expanding settlements, it said.
Hamas also called on those countries that have signed these normalisation accords with Israel to correct their wrong political approach and instead align themselves with the anti-Zionist ideals of the regional nations.
The movement finally called for a strong and effective strategy to confront all the projects aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause – foremost among which are the so-called Abraham Accords and the ‘the deal of century’ crafted by former US president Donald Trump.
These ‘normalisation deals’ were agreed when former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed them with Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani during an official ceremony hosted by Trump at the White House on September 15 2020.
In January 2001, Sudan’s ruling military junta also officially signed the Abraham Accords to normalise ties with Israel.
Then on December 10th last year the Moroccan monarchy signed a deal – brokered by the United States – to normalise relations, and Israel has started up direct flights to Marrakesh which have been loudly condemned by Moroccan social media activists.
Palestinians, who are fighting against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and for their independent state with East Jerusalem (al-Quds) as its capital, condemn these ‘normalisation deals as a betrayal of their cause.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has officially inaugurated its embassy in Israel, less than a year after the two sides agreed to establish formal relations under the US-brokered deal.
The inauguration ceremony last Wednesday was hosted by UAE’s Ambassador to Israel, Mohammad al-Khaja, with the regime’s President Isaac Herzog also in attendance.
The embassy is situated, not in Jerusalem, but in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange building, also known as the Bursa.
Israel opened its embassy in the Emirati capital in late June. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid inaugurated the Israeli embassy in Abu Dhabi and the Israeli consulate in Dubai during a two-day visit.
Israel and the UAE have signed a raft of deals in various areas, ranging from tourism to aviation and financial services, since they signed the normalisation agreement in August last year.
Israeli ministers had previously visited the UAE, but Lapid is the most senior Israeli diplomat to have made the trip, and the first to travel on an official mission.
The Islamic Jihad has denounced the UAE for granting citizenship to 5,000 Israelis.
In March, a planned official visit by then Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the UAE was cancelled due to a ‘dispute’ with Jordan over the use of its airspace, according to Israeli officials.
A member of the Palestinian Fatah movement’s Central Committee has condemned Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) as ‘a traitor’ to the Palestinian cause, and demanded the United Arab Emirates be expelled from the Arab League following their normalisation deal with Israel.
Abbas Zaki warned if the UAE’s doors are opened to ‘naturalise the Zionists, you will perish.
‘The people of the Emirates are free and great and we do not attribute this betrayal to them, because the only traitor is Mohammed bin Zayed,’ Zaki stated.
Separately, senior European ambassadors to Israel, including German and French officials, boycotted an Independence Day ceremony on July 4th at the United States embassy in occupied Jerusalem al-Quds.
According to a report by the Jerusalem Post, the ambassadors ‘decided not to attend the event because their countries consider Jerusalem al-Quds to be an occupied city.’
Those who did take part in the ceremony reportedly included ambassadors from Romania and the United Kingdom, as well as Kosovo, Australia, Norway, and Canada.
Trump sparked controversy by officially recognising Jerusalem al-Quds as the Israeli ‘capital’ in December 2017, before moving the US embassy there from Tel Aviv in May 2018.
Guatemala and Paraguay later followed in Washington’s footsteps, but the latter reversed its decision after just four months.
Israel lays claim to the entire city of Jerusalem al-Quds, but the international community views the city’s eastern sector as occupied territory and Palestinians claim it as the capital of their future state.
- In a report last Sunday, the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said Israeli forces have detained more than 100 Palestinians since the daring jailbreak from the Gilboa prison on September 6th.
The highly fortified maximum security jail is located in the northern part of the occupied territories, and the six prisoners escaped through an underground tunnel which they dug with a spoon.
‘We have documented an average of 14 arrests per day in the occupied West Bank since the men escaped,’ Milena Ansari from Addameer told Al Jazeera. ‘This does not include the Palestinians arrested within Israel.’
Israel launched a campaign of mass arrests and raids in the occupied cities of Ramallah, al-Khalil, Nablus and surrounding villages following the prison break.
A number of Palestinian children were also swept up in the latest wave of arrests.
Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank have also arrested more relatives of the six Palestinian escapees.
In the predawn hours of September 6th, Zakaria Zubeidi, a former commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in Jenin and five Islamic Jihad members tunnelled their way out through their cell’s drainage system and escaped from Gilboa prison.
Four of the Islamic Jihad members were serving life sentences, while the fifth had been held without charge for two years under a so-called administrative detention order, according to Israeli media.
Over 4,500 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons then faced a repressive campaign by the Tel Aviv regime in the wake of the escape.
The Israel Prison Service (IPS) forced many Palestinian prisoners into solitary confinement and restricted their access to essential services.
Last Saturday, Israeli media outlets reported that four of the escapees had been arrested in the northern part of the occupied territories.
Following the arrests last week, thousands of Palestinians held protests across the occupied West Bank in support of the six prisoners, particularly those who’d been recaptured.
The protests were held amid fears of an Israeli retaliation that has already repressed hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners.
The heroic jailbreak has come as a huge embarrassment to Tel Aviv and exposed fault lines in its much-hyped security and intelligence apparatus. The Gilboa prison is one of the most highly-fortified detention centres in Israel.
The Palestinian resistance groups and several political factions have warned Israel against harming or endangering the life of any Palestinian prisoner.
On Sunday, the Israeli ministry of military affairs said that the two remaining Palestinian prisoners had been apprehended early in the morning in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
It said the two Palestinians ‘were caught alive’, surrendering without resistance after troops encircled their building.
But Palestinian media outlets said there were exchanges of gunfire during the pre-dawn raid by Israeli special forces.
Palestine’s WAFA news agency reported on Sunday that the Israeli soldiers fired live bullets at protesters during the clashes which erupted in the neighbourhood following the raid, injuring at least two who had to be hospitalised.
Two other Palestinians, reportedly Jenin residents, were also arrested in the raid, including a physically disabled man.
Prison authorities keep Palestinian inmates under deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards. The prisoners have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment and repression.
Human rights organisations say Israel violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians currently being held in Israeli jails.
Hundreds of them have been incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention where Palestinians are held indefinitely without charge or trial.
