Israel seeking to export own crises to Gaza: Hamas

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas says overnight Israeli airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip are “a message of escalation and aggression” and an attempt by the Israeli regime “to export its internal crises to the strip.”

Israeli warplanes targeted several locations in the central and southern parts of the coastal enclave in the early hours of Monday. The Israeli military claimed in a statement that they hit positions belonging to the Gaza-based Hamas and that the airstrikes were in response to alleged rocket attacks a few hours earlier.

On Monday, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the new Israeli aggression was aimed at deflecting attention away from the worsening political situation inside Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing massive 0protests.

“The valiant resistance, which is well aware of the occupation’s plans and way of thinking and knows how to deal with it, will not allow it to make Gaza an arena for exporting its crises,” Barhoum said.

Netanyahu, the first serving Israeli prime minister to go on trial, has been charged in at least three corruption cases with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. He is accused of receiving extravagant gifts from billionaires and granting media tycoons regulatory favors in return for more agreeable coverage of himself and his family.

On Saturday, an estimated 10,000 Israelis protested against Netanyahu in a rally that was described by Israeli media as the largest in a decade.

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In the past recent weeks, thousands of protesters have also rallied, mainly in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem al-Quds, against Netanyahu’s mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak, calling for his resignation.

Israel is currently witnessing record numbers of coronavirus infections and fatalities amid a deepening unemployment rate of more than 20 percent.

Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007.

Over the past decade, Israel has waged three wars on Gaza, where two million Palestinians live. Thousands of Gazans have been killed in each of the wars since 2008.

The crippling blockade has caused a decline in the standard of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty in the strip.

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