Hamas: Biden’s bid to integrate ‘israel’ into Middle East ‘doomed to fail’

In a statement on Friday, the movement said the declaration only consolidated Washington’s support of Israel’s occupation and aggression against the Palestinians and their homeland.

Hamas further said Washington was blatantly and unconditionally favoring the Zionist entity and its occupation goals. The resistance movement added that the so-called declaration presents more of the same American-Zionist terrorism directed against the Palestinian people.

“It is no different from other invalid charters and treaties that our Palestinian people had experienced throughout their history of struggle and were able to thwart them by their steadfastness and resistance.”

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political office of Hamas also said that the integration of Israel in the region conflicts with the will of Muslim and Arab nations and contradicts the intellectual and cultural heritage of the region.

He called for launching a “strategic dialog” between countries of the region “to build a political alliance to protect the region against normalization, dominance, and exploitation of resources.”

Hamas also called on the Palestinian people, factions, and national forces to declare their rejection of this document, and to move forward on the path of comprehensive resistance until achieving the aspirations of the Palestinian people for liberation and return.

In the Jerusalem Declaration, which was signed during a Thursday meeting between Biden and Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid, the US committed itself to creating a regional structure to deepen Israel’s relations with its partners, fully integrate Israel into the region, and expand the circle of the Tel Aviv regime’s relations with other Arab countries.

In 2020, Israel also signed US-sponsored agreements to normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, in a move decried by the Palestinians as a “stab in the back.”