Hamas: Operation al-Quds Sword best response to ‘israel’s’ annexation plans

The Operation al-Quds Sword “turned the table over the head of the occupation as it thought that it could impose new faits accomplis in Jerusalem [al-Quds] and attack our people there through suppressing and displacing them without the Palestinian people lifting a finger,” said Hamas in a press release on Sunday, the Palestinian Information Center reported.

Tel Aviv launched a brutal bombing campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip on May 10, following Palestinian retaliation against violent raids on worshipers at al-Aqsa Mosque and the regime’s plans to force a number of Palestinian families out of their homes at the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem al-Quds.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 260 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli offensive, including 66 children and 40 women. At least 1,948 others were also wounded.

In response, Palestinian resistance movements, chief among them Hamas, launched Operation al-Quds Sword and fired more than 4,000 rockets and missiles into the occupied territories, killing 12 Israelis.

Apparently caught off guard by the unprecedented barrage of rockets from Gaza, Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire on May 21, which Palestinian resistance movements accepted with Egyptian mediation.

Elsewhere in the statement on Sunday, Hamas called on Palestinians across the occupied territories to continue their uprising for Jerusalem al-Quds and respond to Israel’s ongoing aggression against its inhabitants in the holy city and al-Aqsa Mosque.

The resistance movement also hailed the sacrifices Palestinian living in Jerusalem al-Quds make every day to defend the holy city.

Furthermore, Hamas urged the Arab and Islamic world to play their part in safeguarding the identity of al-Quds and al-Aqsa Mosque and standing decisively against the normalization of ties with the Israeli regime, which “emboldened it to defile the Aqsa Mosque and kill Gaza children.”

Tel Aviv imposed an all-out land, aerial, and ground siege against Gaza in 2007 after Hamas rose to power in the enclave. Israel has also been controlling Gazans’ access to their basic necessities through the siege.

Since the beginning of the blockade, Israel has waged four wars on impoverished Gaza, including the one in May, killing thousands of people. The Israeli military also conducts regular air raids on Palestinian civilians in Gaza under the pretext of fighting Hamas.