Islamist media is reporting that a senior Hamas official has said that Hamas is not just seeking the end to any Israeli control over Gaza but rather wants to control all of Palestine. According to the Middle East Monitor report:
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar said on Friday that his movement’s goal is not simply freeing the Gaza Strip from Israel’s military occupation, but also the liberation of the whole of Palestine, Quds Press has reported.
Speaking to worshippers in a mosque in Gaza after the Friday prayer, Al-Zahar said, ‘If we could set up a national authority, autonomous body or civil administration in any area in Palestine, it does not mean that we will concede any particle of Palestinian land.’
He accused the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of undermining efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip. Half of the Kuwaiti donations meant for Gaza reconstruction have been taken by the PA head, Al-Zahar claimed.
The PA president has lost his legitimacy, the Hamas official pointed out, not least because he has ‘conspired against his people, accepted settlements, called Arab states to strike Gaza and described as ‘divine’ security cooperation with the occupation.’ Al-Zahar put the blame for the death of former prisoner Ja’far Awad in Hebron, and the death of his cousin in the Israeli attack on his funeral, squarely at the door of Abbas. He called Awad’s death a ‘war crime’ because the Israeli authorities refused him proper medical treatment, releasing him only when his condition became desperate.
‘Security cooperation with the Israeli occupation is the cause of the suffering of the Palestinians,’ Al-Zahar insisted, ‘and the PA carries out this devilish security cooperation with Israel.’
Earlier this month, the GMBDW reported on a BBC interview with Hamas political leader Khalid Meshaal in which he claimed that Hamas has accepted the basis for a “two-state solution.”
In May 2014, the GMBDW reported that Egypt has begun the process of revoking citizenship for Senior official Mahmoud al-Zahar. GMBDW coverage of Mahmoud al-Zahar has included:
- In August 2010, the GMBDW reported that al-Zahar supported the building of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” at the site of the 911 attacks.
- In November 2010, we reported that al-Zahar had made comments which justified the historical persecution of the Jews and said they “have no future among the nations of the world. You are headed to annihilation.”
- In December 2011, we reported al-Zahar’s prediction that “the Muslim Brotherhood will keep on ruling from the Tunisia to Gaza as long as the movement fulfils their promises to the people who not only trusted but voted for them as well.”
- In July 2012, we reported on a meeting that included al-Zahar with leaders from UK Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas organizations.
- In July 2013, we reported on al-Zahar’s efforts to rebuild relations between Hamas and Iran.