Hamas leader says committed to ceasefire deal with Israel

A top Islamic Hamas movement leader in Gaza said Tuesday that his movement is still committed to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire reached with Israel in 2014.

Khalil al-Hayya, a member in the movement's politburo, told reporters in Gaza city that Hamas movement is committed to a ceasefire with Israel and is not seeking for a new war in the Gaza Strip (with Israel).

In the summer of 2014, Israel waged a large-scale military air and ground operation on the Gaza Strip, which lasted for 50 days, leaving 2,200 Palestinians killed and severe destructions.

However, although al-Hayya said his movement is not interested in a war with Israel in the Gaza Strip, he stressed that his movement's militants will only fight Israel, in case the latter wages a new war on the enclave and its resistance powers.

Meanwhile, the senior Hamas leader urged the Palestinian consensus government of Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah to give the Gaza Strip more concerns and to stop turning their backs to the enclave's populations.

After Hamas claimed that Hamdallah's government is neglecting the Gaza Strip, it decided to form a special committee to rearrange the role of the various Palestinian ministries that run the Palestinians daily life in the enclave.

The declaration of Hamas to form the committee had been slammed by human rights groups as well as by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamdallah's government.

Hamas decision was considered as an attempt to build up an independent entity in the Gaza Strip and separate the enclave from the entire Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967.

Abbas stated on Sunday that he will never accept to establish a state entity in Gaza only and will never accept establishing a state in the West Bank only, adding that the state will be on all the occupied Palestinian territories.

Source: Xinhua