Alwaght-Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, says the Cairo-brokered ceasefire accord struck with the Israeli regime can only hold if the inhuman blockade imposed on Gaza is lifted.
Mousa Abu Marzouk Deputy Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau in statements posted on his social media page noted that that no long-term truce with the Israeli regime can truly hold before the siege is lifted, border-crossings opened, and reconstruction materials delivered.
He stressed Hamas’s position that any ceasefire deal has to be struck within a national rather than a behind-closed-doors framework.
Abu Marzouk said Hamas has already updated all national factions and Palestinian Authority officials, along with Arab and Western officials including the UN envoy, on its true standpoint vis-à-vis such affairs.
“Hamas shall never be an extension of the Oslo project. Hamas would never accept for itself what it had rejected for others,” added the senior Hamas official.
Last month Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal said an infinite extension of a truce reached with the Israeli regime last year is possible provided that Tel Aviv meets five conditions set by the Palestinian resistance movement.
In an interview with al-Araby al-Jadid daily, Meshaal said the demands comprise the reconstruction of the besieged Gaza Strip in the wake of the war last year; ending the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory; addressing the employment issues of some 50,000 individuals in Gaza; the construction of sea and air ports in the Strip; and addressing the problems of Gazan infrastructure, including water and electricity supplies, and the road and sewage systems.
The truce between the Israeli regime and Hamas was reached at the end of the brutal Israeli war on the Palestinian enclave in 2014.
Nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, were killed in Israel’s 50-day onslaught. Over 11,100 others, including nearly 3,380 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people, were also injured.
Apart from the tremendous loss of life, the war also destroyed hundreds of homes and buildings.
Gaza has been under an inhuman Israeli siege since 2007. The blockade has significantly affected life in the Palestinian territory turning Gaza in to what has been termed as the largest open-air prison in the world.