The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, stressed that the resistance will continue to be the legitimate choice to defend the Palestinians and restore their stolen rights, and strongly criticized the Palestinian Authority's continued engagement with the Israeli occupation.
This came in a statement issued by the movement Thursday, on the eve of the 72nd anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba Day, which falls on May 15 of each year.
"The resistance in all its forms will continue to be the legitimate choice to defend our people, realize the right of its return, and restore its stolen rights," said the movement's spokesman, Abdul Latif Al-Qanoua.
He added that the Corona pandemic this year "will not forget our people or prevent it from commemorating its 72th anniversary of its disaster, and facing the project of annexing the lands of the West Bank to the occupation."
Al-Qanoo ’pointed out that the Palestinian people’s catastrophe is continuing, and its surgeries and pain are still present, and are renewed since 1948, and the occupation is doubling its crimes.
The term Nakba is called the process of displacing Palestinians from their lands, by armed Zionist gangs in 1948, in conjunction with the establishment of the Israeli state over Arab lands.
In that year, nearly 800,000 Palestinians were displaced from their villages and cities to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and neighboring Arab countries.
Thousands of others were also displaced, but they remained inside the territory that was later controlled by the Israeli occupation.
The number of Palestinian refugees in 2019 reached about 5.6 million, according to the records of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
In another statement, Hamas called on the Palestinian Authority to take practical steps on the ground in the face of the occupation and the annexation and settlement projects.
The movement’s leader, Hazem Qassem, said that the Palestinian Authority’s behavior in dealing with national challenges and its insistence on the political, security, and economic relationship with the occupation has lost it “the confidence of the national group in the ability to take decisions to meet these challenges.”