‘No migration except to al-Quds’: Hamas reiterates Palestinians rejection of forced displacement

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has reiterated Palestinians’ rejection of efforts by the Israeli regime and its most supportive ally, the Unites States, to bring about forced displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

“We state it clearly: No migration except to [the holy occupied city of] al-Quds,” the Gaza-based movement said in a statement on Wednesday, repeating its past assertions.

“Our Palestinian people will remain steadfast in their land, clinging to their rights, and will thwart all attempts of forced or voluntary displacement,” it added.

The Israeli regime occupied the western part of al-Quds during a heavily-Western-backed war in 1948 following which it started claiming existence across huge swathes of Palestinian and other regional territories.

The regime occupied the rest of the city, which hosts al-Aqsa Mosque, Muslims’ third-holiest site, during another such wholesale war in 1967. Tel Aviv has ever since set up as many as 12 illegal settlements in the eastern side, each of which feature hundreds of settler units.

This is while Palestinians want East al-Quds to serve as the capital of their future independent state.

Hamas’ reassertion of Palestinians’ commitment to staying on their land and ridding its occupied parts of Israeli presence came a day after the regime resumed a war of genocide that it had begun against Gaza in October 2023 with the self-proclaimed goal of expelling the territory’s two-million-plus-strong Palestinian population.

The regime killed around 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, from the onset of the war until implementation of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas in January.

Following the agreement’s implementation, it would routinely violate the deal to further deadly effects for Palestinians.

On Tuesday, however, the regime restored its attacks to its former proportions. Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed ever since resumption of the brutal military onslaught, with females and minors similarly comprising the majority of the victims.

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“We demand that the war criminal [Benjamin] Netanyahu be held accountable and compelled to retract these actions, as he bears full responsibility for any ensuing repercussions,” Hamas said amid the regime’s resumption of the genocide, referring to the Israeli prime minister.

Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump vowed his country’s complicity in the regime’s goal of depopulating Gaza, saying Washington sought to “own” the Palestinian territory.

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Hamas, its fellow regional resistance groups, and numerous regional and international officials have voiced alarm over Tel Aviv and Washington’s approach, but have described it as unfeasible and self-defeating.

‘Netanyahu in deep crisis’

The movement, meanwhile, pointed to the repeated related threats of forced displacement against Gazans that have been issued by the Israeli regime’s minister for military affairs Israel Katz, asserting that the rhetoric “reveals the depth of the crisis that is faced by war criminal Netanyahu.”

“These threats will not weaken the determination of our Palestinian people, nor will they undermine their steadfastness in holding onto their land and national rights.”

Hamas also lambasted a recent incursion by the Israeli military into the Netzarim Axis, a corridor in central Gaza, which it occupied after launching the war as a means of facilitating its raids in the northern and central parts of the coastal sliver.

“We hold the Zionist occupation and its criminal terrorist leadership fully responsible for the consequences of the ground incursion into central Gaza (Netzarim Axis), which constitutes a new and dangerous violation of the signed ceasefire agreement.”

The movement affirmed its “commitment to the signed ceasefire agreement” and called on the mediators, namely Egypt and Qatar, to “assume their responsibilities in curbing these irresponsible violations and breaches.”

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