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Hamas holds Israel fully responsible for expiration of truce in Gaza

Sunday, 03 December 2023 11:26 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 03 December 2023 11:29 AM ]

People mourn next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on December 2, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)

A senior member of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has held the Tel Aviv regime fully responsible for the failure to extend the week-old truce which collapsed on Friday.

“Claims that Hamas violated the terms of the truce deal are intended to justify the resumption of the genocidal war against civilians in the Gaza Strip,” Ezzat al-Resheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said on Saturday.

Israel and Hamas agreed on a temporary truce on November 24 which was renewed twice before ending on Friday. Under the truce, fighting was paused and humanitarian aid was allowed to enter Gaza as Hamas released captives in exchange for Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners.

An hour before the truce was supposed to end, at 7 am (05:00 GMT), the Israeli military claimed that its so-called missile defense system had detected incoming rockets. After that, they “intercepted a launch from Gaza.”

Minutes after the truce ended, Israeli air raids and artillery fighting resumed in Gaza.

“The occupying regime is repeating its false allegations in the hope that it can invent excuses for its renewed aggression against Gazans,” Resheq added.

He said that Israel is spreading false and unfounded narratives and dismissed the claims about the missile launched from Gaza toward the Israeli-occupied territories.

Such attempts are “aimed at obscuring the regime’s premeditated plan to resume its barbaric bombardments and raids, and commit much more horrific massacres against defenseless civilians” in the coastal enclave, he added.

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“We exhibited our genuine willingness for the extension of the temporary ceasefire during talks with the mediators. We reiterate that the Israel regime is fully responsible for the failure to extend the humanitarian pause as it did not respond positively to the offers it had received through mediators,” Resheq said.

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements waged the surprise Operation al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

The Israeli aggression has so far killed more than 15,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

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