Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Saturday repeated his call for Israel’s destruction, rejecting U.S.- and U.N.-backed demands to disarm the Iranian-supported terrorist group and demilitarize the Gaza Strip.
“The time has come for the ummah [the Islamic nation] to commit to the liberation of Jerusalem as the banner and symbol of freeing Palestine; to cleansing the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque; and to reclaiming Islamic and Christian holy sites,” the top terrorist said, speaking by video link at a pro-Palestinian conference hosted in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
“The time has come for the ummah [the Islamic nation] to commit to the liberation of Jerusalem as the banner and symbol of freeing Palestine; to cleansing the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque; and to reclaiming Islamic and Christian holy sites,” the top terrorist said, speaking by video link at a pro-Palestinian conference hosted in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
The global anti-Israel sentiment that has emerged since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre has created opportunities “to remove this entity [Israel] from our homeland and exclude it from the international stage,” Mashaal told attendees.
The terrorist leader denounced the demand that Hamas give up its weapons under U.S. President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan for the Gaza Strip, telling the conference that “protecting the resistance project and its weapons is the right of our people to defend themselves.” “The resistance and its weapons are the ummah’s honor and pride,” he continued. “A thousand statements are not worth a single projectile of iron.” (Read More)
