Hamas reiterates demand for complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza

Gaza: Any ceasefire proposal for the Gaza Strip that does not guarantee a full Israeli troop pullout from the enclave “is unacceptable,” Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas Political Bureau, vowed.

Hamas showed maximum flexibility and accepted ceasefire proposals, but only on the condition of a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh made this statement after his family members were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

He called on the international community to help secure a ceasefire, deliver aid, and supply essential provisions to the people in Gaza.

Regarding the future arrangements about Gaza, Haniyeh said that all ideas about the day after the Israeli offensive and internal arrangements about the strip should be “purely Palestinian.”

“No one has the right to intervene, neither the occupation nor anyone else,” he stressed.

On Tuesday morning, Palestinian security sources reported that Israeli planes targeted Haniyeh’s family home in the Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City in northern Gaza, with several missiles, leveling it to the ground.

Medical sources told Xinhua that the airstrike resulted in the deaths of 10 individuals, including Haniyeh’s sister, with several family members still trapped under the rubble.

“If the Israeli army thinks that targeting my family will change our positions and resistance, it is delusional,” Haniyeh responded in the statement.

Israel launched a large-scale offensive in the Gaza Strip to retaliate against a Hamas rampage through the southern Israeli border on Oct. 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 others were taken hostage. The total Palestinian death toll in Gaza from the conflict climbed to 37,658 on Tuesday, health authorities in the enclave said.