A senior Hamas official has reaffirmed the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement’s determination to continue standing up to the Israeli regime, which has brought the coastal sliver under an unrelenting genocidal war.
Osama Hamdan, Hamas’ senior representative in Lebanon, made the remarks in an exclusive interview with Press TV on Wednesday, the 68th day of the war.
According to the official, the movement is ready for “a long war” against the Israeli regime, and would not give up resistance.
The Israeli regime has been waging the war against Gaza since October 7 following an operation staged by the territory’s resistance groups, dubbed Operation al-Aqsa Storm, during which hundreds were taken captive.
Also on Wednesday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said 18,608 people, mostly women and children, had been killed, and 50,594 others injured in the Israeli strikes so far.
Palestinian and other regional officials have warned that through its unbridled aggression, the Israeli regime pursues a policy of resettling the people of Gaza in Egypt.
Hamdan said the United States — which has been throwing unreserved military and political support behind the Israeli war — and some European countries backed the regime’s plan to forcibly relocate Gazans to Egypt.
Washington, he added, had even called on Cairo to take in two million Palestinians from Gaza, with Saudi Arabia receiving another half a million.
The United States had, however, failed to win the support of Egypt and Saudi Arabia for the plan and was now pushing for the Gazans to be relocated to the southern areas inside the Palestinian territory.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Hamdan elaborated on the issue of the captives that the resistance had been holding since Operation al-Aqsa Storm.
Asked about the number of the captives still held by the group, he said, “I have to say that we didn’t announce the numbers of the captives…for several reasons, mainly for the need of negotiations with the Israelis.”
Hamdan also said the movement had so far announced “the death of a woman with her two children and two soldiers [among the captives] until now” during the Israeli regime’s indiscriminate attacks against Gaza.
“Around 17 [captives] were [also] killed under the rubble,” before a short-lived truce that took effect between Hamas and Israel last month, the Hamas official, meanwhile, noted.
