The plans announced by the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem about linking the western and eastern Israeli settlements in occupied Jerusalem by light train trail is another colonial project added to the Israeli Judaisation and settlement schemes in the occupied holy city.

This project which is planned to connect the different parts of Jerusalem with other Palestinian cities occupied in 1948, such as Tal al-Rabia, Jafa and Haifa, highlights the Israeli occupation’s insistence to impose the status quo on the ground and its determination to go ahead with its Judaisation plans.

It is also aimed at imposing full Israeli sovereignty on occupied Jerusalem, separating it from the occupied West Bank, and changing its historic, Arab and Islamic features, as planned in the Trump’s Deal of the Century.

We stress that Jerusalem should be the core of all Palestinian projects and programmes led by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Palestinian Authority and other Palestinian factions. All Palestinian factions should develop a joint strategy to defend the holy city.

Amid these Israeli Judaisation projects, Hamas states the following:

First: We strongly condemn any Israeli settlement or Judaisation project on our occupied lands, above all in occupied Jerusalem.

Second: The Israeli attempts to change the geographical and demographic features and the Arab and Islamic identity of Jerusalem are deemed to failure. Jerusalem will remain an Arab and Islamic city and an integral part of Palestine.

Third: The increasing settlement activity in occupied Jerusalem is one of the outcomes of normalisation agreement between some Arab countries and the Israeli occupation that encouraged the latter to annex more Palestinian lands.

Fourth: Hamas calls on the Palestinian people living in occupied 1948 territories to visit and stay in Al-Aqsa in bid to block the Israeli plans.

Fifth: We call on the Palestinian Authority to shoulder its responsibility towards Jerusalem by supporting the Palestinian people there against the Israeli expansion and settlement plans.

Sixth: We call upon the leaders of the Arab and Islamic Ummah to take a serious position against the Israeli settlement projects in occupied Jerusalem. They should also support the steadfastness of the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem with all possible means and at economic, media and cultural levels.

Seventh: We demand the international community and the European Union to put pressure on the Israeli occupation to stop its colonial projects in occupied Jerusalem that are illegal according to the international law.

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas

Jerusalem Department

Wednesday

15 Jamad Awwal 1442

30 December 2020