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.

“The civilian people in Jerusalem al-Quds tried to defend themselves against the extremist settlers who tried to enter our holy mosque and they were successful in stopping them, but the Israeli army was also preparing their own atrocities and their own process and oppressions against our own civilians in Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrah [neighborhood] and in the holy al-Aqsa Mosque, and then they did not listen to the resistance’s warnings,” the Hamas envoy noted.

Israel surprised by Hamas capabilities

Elsewhere in his remarks, Qaddoumi said the Israeli regime was surprised by the capabilities of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups, adding that the resistance groups believe in developing their own military capabilities.

The Israeli media “have said that the Israeli army and security bodies were not fully aware of what to expect from Hamas and Palestinian resistance,” he remarked. “That’s what has happened exactly.”

He also said Palestinians are engaged in an “asymmetrical war” imposed by a “brutal nuclear regime” that has been attacking and offending the Palestinian people.

Qaddoumi said Palestine will not forget and forgive Israel for killing 56 civilians in Gaza, underlining the Palestinian people’s right to self-defense as granted by international law.

He said the bottom line is that Palestine is in a defensive process against the Israeli occupation and aggression and that under such circumstances, “we have the right to defend ourselves.”

“We and the resistance could not keep silent and allow them to kill and injure our civilians in Palestine,” he stated. “So we have started to respond or react to those atrocities and we will continue to do that.”

US complicit in Israeli crimes

Qaddoumi also vehemently criticized the US administration and said they are complicit in the Israeli regime’s acts of aggression. “They have to rethink that,” he added.

“I would say to the American administration that if you want to send a positive message to the international community, at least you have to listen to the Palestinian narrative, which is the just narrative,” the envoy said.

“They should stop this biased behavior and in their foreign policy,” he added.

Qaddoumi argued that Israel cannot face the brave people of the Palestinian resistance movements and that is why they resort to attacking civilian targets.

He underlined the need for the international community to first understand what is happening in Palestine and then to confront the Israeli brutalities.

If the Israelis “don’t pull out of al-Aqsa Mosque, if they don’t pull out of Sheikh Jarrah, the resistance will continue to defend their own people against those atrocities and we are having more surprises and more things to be said and done against those atrocities,” Qaddoumi added

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