Fri 26 July 2019:
Gaza-based resistance group calls Palestinian president’s move ‘step taken in right direction’
The Hamas resistance group said Thursday it supported Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ decision to suspend all agreements signed with Israel. The Gaza-based group said in a written statement that the Ramallah-based government’s decision was “a step taken in right direction”. Abbas announced earlier in the day that all agreements signed with Israel have been suspended.
“We will not bow to dictates and imposing a fait accompli by force in Jerusalem and elsewhere,” he said, apparently in reference to the Israeli government’s recent demolition of dozens of Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem. The Hamas movement also said the decision was in line with the “tough process” which the Palestinian cause is going through. It added that the people were waiting for the “immediate realization” of the decision.
The group also called for the establishment of a national unity government, halting security coordination with occupying forces and the release of political detainees. On Monday, bulldozers accompanied by hundreds of Israeli soldiers moved into the neighborhood of Wadi Homs in East Jerusalem and began razing several buildings in the area. Israeli authorities claim the buildings were constructed without a permit.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem, where the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is located, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. In a move never recognized by the international community, Israel annexed the entire city in 1980, claiming it the self-proclaimed Jewish state’s “eternal and undivided” capital. Jerusalem remains at the heart of the decades-long Middle East dispute, with Palestinians hoping that East Jerusalem might one day serve as the capital of a Palestinian state.
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