Hamas official calls on West Bank Palestinians to attack Israelis, slams PA for cooperating with Israel

A top Hamas official implicitly calls on West Bank Palestinians, including members of the Palestinian Authority security forces, to carry out attacks against Israelis.

“We are working to expand the resistance in the West Bank. I ask every person in the West Bank who carries a weapon, officially or unofficially, to fulfill his responsibility, because every person with a weapon in the West Bank can make a difference and have a qualitative impact,” says Hussam Badran, a former leader of Hamas’s military wing in the northern West Bank who orchestrated several terror attacks against Israelis during the Second Intifada, and lives today in Qatar.

“A Palestinian today does not need an order or decision by any party to act, and must take the initiative on his own,” he adds in an interview with the Qudsuna satellite TV channel.

Badran says that “resistance is a legitimate right” of Hamas, even though he admits that the terror group has lower military capabilities than Israel. He further claims that Hamas’s demands are those of the whole Palestinian people, and that the terror group has shown “great flexibility and positivity” in talks for a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Israel.

The terror group’s positions in negotiations are formulated after consultation with the movement’s leadership in Gaza, Badran says, in a probable reference to the terror group’s leader Yahya Sinwar, and adds that Hamas has “categorically refused at all stages of the negotiations to discuss the day after the war” in the Gaza Strip.

“We will not allow anyone to dictate to it the arrangement of the Palestinian house,” he continues, adding that the terror group aims for the formation of a national consensus government in preparation for elections throughout the Palestinian territories.

Reconciliation talks between the two main Palestinian factions were due to be held in China in mid-June, but were delayed and no new date was set. Hamas and Fatah officials traded the blame for the postponement.

In the interview, Badran accuses PA President Mahmoud Abbas of obstructing the plan for a unity government, and insists that the Islamist group cannot be sidelined or forced to make concessions.

He takes a swipe at the beleaguered PA, saying that “the government in Ramallah is unable to perform its duties in the West Bank, let alone can it play any role in Gaza,” and accuses the PA of having “contributed to weakening the resistance in the West Bank” because of its security coordination with Israel.