A senior official of Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has rejected claims by Israel and some of its Western backers about the Gaza Strip being governed by any party except its own people after the end of the ongoing Israeli war.
Osama Hamdan, who is Hamas’ representative in Lebanon and also a member of the group’s politburo, made the remark in a Sunday press conference in Beirut.
“We say to the American administration and the criminal leaders of the occupation that Gaza will only be governed by its own people, and there will be no political or security authority except for the Palestinians there.”
His remarks came after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this week that when the Israeli war on Gaza ends, the territory should be unified with the occupied West Bank under the administration of the Palestinian Authority.
On Saturday, however, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, underscoring the growing divergence between the regime and the US over this issue.
“We are a free people who do not accept guardianship from anyone, and our blood and our lives will be the price for our freedom…. So, save yourselves the trouble of thinking, and think about how to get down from the tree before you burn,” Hamdan said.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the Hamas official criticized the international community for doing nothing in response to Israel’s airstrike on al-Ahli Arab Hospital, also known as Baptist Hospital, last month.
“The neo-Nazis [in Israel] … committed the massacre at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City on the 17th of October, in which about 500 [people] were martyred, and about 600 civilians and children were injured. The world at that time stood by and did not question the occupation, nor did it hold its criminals accountable.”
He added that instead of condemning Israel, some of the regime’s supporters even promoted its lies and gave it a green light to commit more massacres.
Hamdan said the world’s failure to hold Israel accountable for that crime emboldened the regime to target more hospitals and commit further bloodshed.
“Today … massacre of hospitals … by the occupation [regime] continues in Gaza City and the north [of the territory] … in full view of the world with direct bombing of al-Shifa Medical Complex, al-Nasr Complex, Indonesian Hospital, and al-Quds Hospital,” the Hamas official added.
He noted that the regime’s strikes have “killed the displaced people and medical staff, prevented ambulances from moving, and cut off all medical supplies” to the territory.
“If the occupation previously tried to hide its crime in the Baptist Hospital massacre and tried to evade responsibility for it, today it makes hospitals its direct targets, bombing them with planes, and does not care about the anger of the world, nor the embarrassment of its supporters and partners,” Hamdan said.
The official warned that anybody who remains silent or fails to take action to stop or prevent Israel’s attacks on hospitals, or to hold its leaders accountable before international courts is responsible for the massacres that are going on in Gaza’s hospitals.
“We also consider the US administration and President [Joe] Biden, in particular, directly responsible for this crime, which was committed with US aircraft and missiles and absolute US support,” the Hamas official noted.
Hamdan said Israel continues to kill Palestinians to make up for the defeat it faced on October 7, when the Gaza-based resistance groups launched Operation al-Aqsa Storm in response to the regime’s decades-long atrocities against Palestinians.
