Hamas envoy rejects ‘terrorist’ tag, champions defensive tit-for-tat actions against Israeli atrocities

The Hamas representative to Iran has strongly rejected Western-pushed narratives describing the Palestinian resistance movement as a terrorist organization, saying the rockets launched from the Gaza Strip toward the occupied territories are merely defensive tit-for-tat measures against the terrorist occupying regime in Tel Aviv.

“What we are doing is a reaction to the [offensive actions] of Israel. If Israel continues to attack, we will continue to attack them as well,” Khaled Qaddoumi told Press TV on Wednesday.

Qaddoumi warned that if Israel continues to target Palestinian civilians, “we will definitely target their own civilians. This is the formula, which is a just formula.”

He also said, “We are not a terrorist organization. We are a brave people who are under Israeli terrorism.”

Hinting at the Israeli regime’s racist attitude toward Palestinians, Qaddoumi said the blood that runs through Palestinian people’s bodies is the same as the blood running through the bodies of all of the people in the world.

“It’s not like that their blood is holy rose water,” he said of the Israelis.

Qaddoumi maintained that the recent confrontations between the Israelis and Palestinians started in Jerusalem al-Quds and then extended to Gaza.

He said the great majority of those who were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza were civilians, exposing the brutal nature of the Israeli regime against Palestinians.