The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has denounced as “a war crime accompanied by criminal aggression” the latest call by an Israeli minister for Palestinian residents of Gaza to leave the besieged region in order for extremist settlers to return to the area after the war.
Hamas, in a statement on Sunday night, censured Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich’s call to displace two million Palestinians and keep about 200,000 in Gaza as “vile mockery” and a war crime in the company of the ongoing criminal onslaught against the coastal sliver.
The group added that the international community and the United Nations must take decisive actions to stop the Israeli regime’s crimes and hold its leaders accountable for what they have done to the Palestinian people.
“Our people have declared their position. They will stand firmly and steadfastly in the face of all attempts to displace them from their land and homes, until full liberation of the occupied territories and return of all refugees,” the statement read.
Earlier on Sunday, Smotrich called for encouraging the “emigration” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“We need to encourage emigration from there. If there were 100,000-200,000 Arabs in the strip and not two million, the whole conversation about the day after [the war] would be completely different,” he told Israeli Army Radio.
“They want to leave. They have been living in a ghetto for 75 years and are in need,” Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionism Party, added.
Abbas: Palestinians will not accept displacement
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas emphasized that Palestinians will remain steadfast in defense of their legitimate rights, and will not accept displacement from their land at all.
“Today, our steadfast Palestinian people are subjected to an all-out war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and al-Quds, with the aim of liquidating our national cause and downplaying it as a humanitarian cause,” Abbas said on Sunday.
“But we tell them, the more your aggression and terrorism increase, the stronger, more determined, and more resolute our people will become in adherence to their land and legitimate national rights,” the Palestinian leader added.
Abbas stressed that the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza “will not break Palestinians’ will. We will remain steadfast on our land and continue the struggle until we achieve victory and independence.”
The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are one indivisible geographical unit, the Palestinian president noted.
Most Palestinians displaced from their homeland after the Nakba (Catastrophe), when Israel proclaimed its illegal existence on May 15, 1948, have ended up in neighboring Arab states.
Arab leaders have maintained that any latter-day move aimed at forced expulsion of Palestinians would be absolutely unacceptable.
