Hamas: Israeli occupation uses normalisation to ‘expand its hegemony’

Speaking at the second international meeting of “Muslims and Christians in the face of Normalisation,” member of Hamas Political Bureau Khalil al-Hayya said: “The Israeli occupation is exploiting normalisation with Arab state to expand its hegemony in the region.”The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas warned of rising tide of normalisation between Arab states and the Israeli occupation.

Al-Hayya slammed normalisation as “betrayal and a stab in the back of the Palestinian people,” stressing that the Palestinians “will continue resisting the Israeli occupation until the liberation of their homeland.”

He also said that “the US administration is helping the Israeli occupation expanding its hegemony in the region,” stressing that the US “is taking advantage of the preoccupation of Arab world with unreal internal disputes and coerces some of the Arab regimes to support the Israeli occupation through normalizing ties with them.”

The senior Hamas leader reiterated that normalisation came “to save Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from criminal prosecution over corruption charges and US President Donald Trump from losing November’s presidential elections.”

Meanwhile, he said, “the embattled Arab regimes are normalising with the Israeli occupation to entrench their rule at the expense of the Palestinian cause.”

He also said: “The Israeli occupation will not allow the Palestinians to establish an independent state or Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland and will rather continue Judaising Jerusalem and Palestinian holy sites and intensify its crimes against Palestinians.”

Al-Hayya warned that normalising ties with the Israeli occupation and using Arab religious figures to promote the normalisation helps the occupation state “whitewashing its image at the expense of the Palestinian people.