December 5, 2023

The following statement was given at a Hamas press conference on Dec. 3, 2023. 

Firstly, we pay tribute to the souls of our people’s martyrs who ascended since the Nazi occupation began its aggressive war against our people in the Gaza Strip. We ask Allah Almighty for a speedy recovery for the wounded and the sick, and we send a greeting of steadfastness and dignity to our people in the Gaza Strip, who are patient, stationed, and firmly rooted in their land, facing a brutal aggression and a genocide that modern history has not witnessed before.

The resumption of the criminal Netanyahu and his Nazi army’s rabid war and heinous massacres against unarmed women, children, and civilians, and against hospitals, schools, mosques, and shelters for displaced people, in every part of the Gaza Strip, north and south, and escalating their aggression and crimes in the West Bank and Al-Quds, will not achieve any of his goals.

We say with all strength and confidence: What the occupation did not achieve in more than 50 days before the temporary ceasefire, it will not achieve afterwards, no matter how long this war extends.  Netanyahu and his army will reap nothing but failure and harsh defeat and more bodies of their soldiers and destruction of their tanks and vehicles, and sinking more and more in the swamp of their Nazi crimes on the land of Gaza.

And we say it continuously: Gaza was and will remain the graveyard of invaders and occupiers. The goals of Netanyahu and his army will be shattered on the rock of our people’s steadfastness, and the Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades and the victorious resistance forces will continue to repel the aggression and defend our people in the Gaza Strip, and inflict heavy losses on the Nazi enemy soldiers and officers until we drive them out of Gaza and sweep them off our land.

The U.S. administration, its president Biden and his Secretary of State Blinken, are partners in the Palestinian bloodshed, massacres, and crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide. They will pay the price for their crimes in their political future, and they must be pursued in international courts as war criminals.

Here, we send a greeting to the free people of the U.S. who raise their voices high in rejecting the aggression. We appreciate the position of Arab-Americans in a number of swing states and their decision to withhold their votes from Biden, and to make him pay the price for supporting the aggression against our people. We call on every free person in the United States who rejects the crimes of the Zionist occupation to withhold their votes from Biden, the candidates of his party in all states, and every candidate who supports the Zionist massacres against the Palestinian people.

The Zionist propaganda and some Western and U.S. media are biased towards the Zionist narrative promoting that the Al-Qassam Brigades deal harshly with the detainees, and that they are held in miserable conditions, but this false narrative received a crushing blow through the video recordings broadcast by the Al-Qassam Brigades during and after each prisoner and detainee exchange operation with both settler and foreign women and children.

During the seven days of the prisoner exchange negotiations, the whole world saw a big contrast between the treatment of the men of the Martyr Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades toward the settlers and foreign detainees, women and children, over 50 days, and the treatment of the Zionist occupation army towards Palestinian prisoners during their arrest and captivity since October 7.

We had shown high flexibility in continuing the negotiations for extending the temporary ceasefire, and we informed the mediators that we were ready to continue it, but the intransigence of the occupation – its procrastination, its lack of seriousness, and its premeditated intention to continue the war and aggression and bombing of civilians – all prevented the success of the negotiation process.

In light of the occupation’s obstruction of reaching an extension of the humanitarian ceasefire, we affirm that the resumption of prisoner exchange negotiations is contingent upon stopping the aggression and adopting a ceasefire. The occupation’s claim, since the beginning of its aggressive war, about the existence of safe zones in the south of the [Gaza] Strip, and its continuous invitation for citizens to head there, has been revealed today as a premeditated plan and a trap for committing more massacres against unarmed civilians and displaced people in the south.

There are no safe zones, and the aggression and massacres target the south of the Strip, as well as the north.  We renew our firm position on rejecting all the occupation’s plans to displace our people from the Gaza Strip, and we warn against all attempts to align and engage with them.

We commend the heroic operations in Al-Quds and the Jordan Valley, and the bravery of our revolutionary youth in confronting all attempts of the occupation to invade the camps of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Balata, facing its soldiers with all their strength. We call for the escalation of all forms of resistance and engagement with the enemy, and for the steadfast West Bank to continue as a volcano and flame burning the occupier and its settler hordes.

‘Escalate all forms of mobilization’

The continued aggression of the occupation against Al-Aqsa Mosque – by preventing worshippers from reaching it, performing their prayers there, and assaulting them – since October 7 is a crime and a provocation to all Muslims of the world, and will not succeed in changing its Islamic reality. Our people will continue to defend it, no matter the sacrifices.

We emphasize the need to intensify the entry of relief, medical aid, fuel, gas, and all necessary equipment for the work of the rescue teams, civil defense, and municipalities in the Gaza Strip. Also the introduction of field hospitals in all medical specialties, and supplying the hospitals of the Gaza Strip with everything necessary to rehabilitate them to provide services to our people there.  Also, the speedy evacuation of those with emergency and urgent cases among the wounded and sick out of the Gaza Strip for treatment.

We call on the Arab and Islamic countries and the free people of the world to form official and popular delegations to visit the Gaza Strip, to break the siege and support the steadfastness and legitimate struggle of our people.  We renew our call to the masses of our Arab and Islamic nation and the free people of the world to escalate all forms of mobilization, demonstrations and events, in all cities, capitals, and squares of the world, in rejection of the continued aggressive war on our people in Gaza, and in support and solidarity with the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights to freedom, independence, and ending the aggression and occupation.

We express our deep gratitude to all international institutions and personalities who have preferred to stay in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the aggression and after its renewal. We also commend all the global official and popular positions rejecting the aggression, especially the Jewish positions opposing the Zionist entity and the policy of the U.S. administration.

We call on Belgium and Spain to build on their bold positions and lead a European and international movement to visit the Gaza Strip to witness the extent of the occupation’s crimes and the depth of the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Mercy and eternity for the martyrs, speedy recovery for the wounded and sick; glory and honor for the heroic men of the resistance! Victory for our people is near. Disgrace, shame, and defeat for the Zionist Nazi enemy. Indeed, it is a jihad of victory or martyrdom.

(This statement has been lightly edited)