Haneyya on Return March: New stage has started

Head of Hamas’s Political Bureau Ismail Haneyya on Monday said that the protests along the border between Gaza and the 1948 occupied Palestine will continue until they achieve their goals and all Palestinian refugees return to their lands.

During a ceremony to inaugurate the Return Square east of Gaza, Haneyya said that the Great March of Return is in its beginning and will continue “marking the start of a new phase that has closed the page of humiliation and security coordination”.

The Palestinians, Haneyya pointed out, are fighting in a battle for national independence against apartheid and discrimination, stressing that both Hamas and Gaza will never recognize Israel or make any concessions.

The Hamas leader continued to say, “Although we are in the second week of the March of Return, this peaceful popular march has achieved important goals, and we are still in the beginning.”

He explained that the March of Return has brought the Palestinian cause back to square one: a political cause of a displaced people on whose land an illegitimate state was established and a cause of a people seeking independence and the right to return to their lands.

The mass demonstrations, he argued, have brought the Palestinian cause back to the world’s attention “after some tried to bury it through suspicious deals and reduce it to an issue of bread and electricity”.

These demonstrations, he added, will continue day after day and Friday after Friday until 15th May.

Haneyya slammed the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, who on Sunday threatened that the Palestinian Authority would no longer be responsible for what happens in the Gaza Strip if Hamas does not relinquish control over the coastal enclave.

“Gaza will not abandon the West Bank and Jerusalem, and will not give up all the land of Palestine,” he said

Haneyya mentioned that Gaza protests have so far thwarted the US president Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” and his decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“Palestine and Jerusalem belong to us,” Haneyya declared, urging Palestinians to preserve the peacefulness of the protests.

He concluded his speech by asserting, “We will break the walls of the blockade, remove the occupation and return to all Palestinian lands.”