A senior leader of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has warned that Hamas will thwart any plot designed by the Israeli regime to target Palestinian refugees’ right of return to Palestine. RNA - Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ Political Bureau, made the remark during a speech at a gathering in the besieged Gaza Strip on Sunday, accusing US and Israeli media of encouraging Palestinians to emigrate from their homeland.
“The issue of refugees has been the target of a conspiracy since the beginning of the first refugee displacement and expulsion,” he said.
“Today, more than any time in the past, we need a clear and national strategic plan in order to face this dangerous plot,” which is “against al-Quds, against the refugees, against our land and against human beings.”
The Hamas official said the resistance movement would never succumb to pressure by the Israeli regime and its allies and would defend the refugees’ right of return.
The 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which led to the forging of the Israeli regime and its subsequent occupation of the Palestinian territories, displaced around 750,000 Palestinians, none of whom were ever allowed back to their homeland.
The Palestinians diaspora has continued to grow since the first expulsion and it is now estimated that more than seven million Palestinian refugees are scattered around the world.
Haniyeh said the US-planned “deal of the century” sought to consolidate the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and kill the Palestinian cause, adding that so-called deal was based on three issues, “targeting of al-Quds, targeting the refugees’ right of return, and targeting and controlling the occupied West Bank.”
That US plan on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — which is widely reported to be biased in favor of the Tel Aviv regime — has already been unanimously rejected by all Palestinian factions, including Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
The US unveiled the economic portion of the initiative during a conference in Bahrain on June 25-26 despite a Palestinian boycott.
Palestinians stopped recognizing the US as a mediator in the conflict with the Tel Aviv regime in 2017, after US President Donald Trump recognized occupied Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s “capital” in defiance of international law.
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