Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal says Friday that Israel’s ground operation in Gaza is destined to fail, in remarks to AFP in the Qatari capital.
“What the occupier Israel failed to achieve through its air and sea raids, it will not be able to achieve with a ground offensive. It is bound to fail,” Mashaal says from his exile in Doha.
A Hamas spokesman in Gaza said earlier that “Israel will pay a high price” for launching the ground operation and that the Islamist Palestinian movement “is ready for the confrontation.”
Mashaal says Hamas has “clear demands,” including an end to “the aggression and collective punishment against our people in Gaza and in the West Bank, as well as the lifting of the Gaza siege.”
He insists that the “source of the problem lies with the Israeli occupation and the construction of settlements” which, he said, the Palestinian people are “determined to get rid of sooner or later.” He does not elaborate.
Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal displays a page purporting to prove that the kidnapped Israeli teenagers were soldiers, June 23, 2014. (photo credit: YouTube image)
— AFP
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