Press Release on the Anniversary of Al-Aqsa Intifada

Before eighteen years, the Israeli Occupation’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, accompanied with a large number of Israeli settlers, broke into Al-Aqsa Mosque in a provocative and showing-off activity that triggered the outrage of the Palestinian People, who fought off this aggression and sacrificed for the sake of their holy site.

The Palestinian people on that day approved to the whole world their tight connection with Al-Aqsa and they would uphold that link regardless of the Trump’s threats and recognition of Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Palestine, as the Israeli Occupation’s capital. Trump also moved the U.S embassy into the holy city, neglecting the history of the Palestinian people and their absolute preparedness to defend Jerusalem.

On this occasion, Hamas Movement stresses the following

First: Hamas hails the Palestinian people in Jerusalem, in occupied Palestine, and in diaspora for their steadfastness when confronting the Israeli Occupation, especially the Palestinian freedom fighters who defend Al-Aqsa Mosque and fight off the occupation there. The resistance movement, furthermore, calls on the Palestinian people to stick to this path until restoring all the Palestinian rights and liberating Palestine.   

Second: Hamas reiterates its full support to the Great Return March and the Palestinian peaceful protesters who enjoy determination to remove the blockade the Israeli Occupation has been imposing on the Gaza Strip since 2006 and to stress their right of return to their homelands from which they were expelled in 1948 by Israeli gangs.

Third: The movement confirms that it is entitled to resist the Israeli Occupation because all laws and norms give a people under occupation the right to resist their occupier. Moreover, Hamas has the right to all forms of resistance staring from the armed struggle and ending up with the peaceful and popular resistance means.

Fourth: The circumstances that led to the eruption of Al-Aqsa Intifada are not only ongoing but also deteriorating.  The Israeli occupation launches aggressions against the Palestinians and exercises vandalism at its will and whim, while the Palestinian people are subjected to suffering and hardships. Nevertheless, they insist on fighting off the Israeli Occupation and its continual aggressions.

Fifth: Al-Aqsa Intifada has approved the failure of the settlement path and showed that the occupation does only comprehend the language of power and resistance. This, on the other hand, reflects that the option of resistance is trustful and reliable.

Sixth: Hamas calls on the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas to stop the security collaboration with the Israeli Occupation through which it arrests the Palestinian freedom fighters and tortures them, depriving them of their right to resist the occupation.

Seventh: Hamas reiterates its rejection to the ‘deal of the century’ and all regional solutions that in a way or another liquidate the Palestinian issue and vanish the legal and national rights of the Palestinian people.

Eighth: Hamas rejects the recognition of the Trump’s administration of Jerusalem, which is the eternal capital of Palestine, as the capital of the Israeli occupation and the transfer of the U.S. embassy to the holy city. With their enormous sacrifice on May 14, the Palestinian people declared the Trump’s moves invalid and announced that they do not alter any single historical fact whether in the past or in the future, as Jerusalem will remain the eternal capital of Palestine.

Ninth: Hamas calls on the PA’s President to lift the punitive measures imposed on the Gaza Strip where the Palestinian people suffer difficult humanitarian conditions.

Tenth: Hamas stresses that the PA has to remove its sanctions, implement reconciliation agreements signed in 2017 (Beirut) and 2011 (Cairo), and form a real consensus government. The PA has to stop protecting the occupation and repeating its acts in vain. Rather, it must side with the Palestinian people who opt for freedom, dignity, and resisting the occupation; no one would have the power to remove the Palestinian people’s will to live freely on their homeland.