Palestinians ‘legally entitled’ to armed resistance against Israeli occupation: Hamas
A senior official of the Hamas resistance group says Palestinians are morally and legally entitled to use arms in their struggle to free their homeland from the decades-long Israeli occupation.
Osama Hamdan, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon and a member of the group’s politburo, made the remarks in an interview with the website Drop Site News published on Monday, amid reports that Israel is insisting on the disarmament of Hamas as a precondition for accepting a Gaza ceasefire.
He said talks about disarming the Palestinians, who are oppressed and occupied by the powerful Israeli army, will not solve the problem.
“Palestinians have both a moral obligation and a legal mandate under international law to employ armed resistance to fight an Israeli occupation that has been repeatedly ruled illegal in international courts and is condemned as a system of apartheid by the world’s leading human rights organizations,” he added.
“So there is no option for the Palestinians to get rid of this occupation without the resistance, no other option.”
Hamdan also noted that Hamas will not capitulate to any demands from Israel or the US to lay down its arms.
The resistance group, he emphasized, will reject any temporary ceasefire deal that does not include a clear path to the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the regime’s genocide against Palestinians in the besieged territory.
The official further said that the Israelis are seeking to eliminate the Palestinian cause by raising the issues of the nation’ forced displacement and Hamas disarmament.
“When they (the Israelis) talk about disarming the Palestinians—not only Hamas, the Palestinians—it means that they want the Palestinians to surrender. And when you surrender, you have to accept the will of the occupier,” he pointed out.
Israel launched its brutal Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023. It has so far killed at least 52,567 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured more than 118,610 others.
The Tel Aviv regime accepted Hamas’s longstanding negotiation terms under a Gaza ceasefire, which began on January 19.
On March 18, however, Israel unilaterally broke the truce, resumed its relentless bombing of Gaza, and redeployed troops to the Palestinian territory.
