Hamas has warned Donald Trump that it will continue to ‘resist’ Israel’s ‘hateful occupation’ as the terrorist group urged the president-elect to ‘work seriously to stop the war’ in Gaza.
Trump, 78, has expressed support for Israel’s fight to destroy Hamas in the Palestinian enclave but has said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must finish the job quickly.
He even asked Netanyahu, a Trump ally widely believed to have favoured his return to power, to conclude the war by his inauguration on January 20, reports claim.
Palestinians, who have been locked in war with Israel for more than a year, have expressed fear over Trump’s return to the White House and warn it could be ‘new catastrophe in the history of the Palestinian people’.
However, they are also begging him to make good on his promise to help bring peace to the Middle East.
Hamas said the United States election was a matter for the American people but it called for an end to the ‘blind support’ for Israel from the US.
‘We urge Trump to learn from Biden’s mistakes,’ Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said after Trump’s victory was declared early Wednesday.
Abu Zuhri also said Trump would be tested on his statements that he can stop the war within hours of taking office as US president.
Trump, who has expressed a desire to end the war, is understood to have asked Netanyahu in July – when the Israeli leader visited him at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida – to wrap up the war by his inauguration.
Hamas, in a statement Wednesday morning, said the incoming Trump Administration must ‘work seriously to stop the war of genocide and aggression our Palestinian people’ in Gaza and ‘stop the aggression against the brotherly Lebanese people’, Fox News reported.
They urged him to ‘stop providing military support’ and ‘political cover’ to Israel, which they branded the ‘Zionist entity’, and to ‘recognize the legitimate rights of our people’.
‘[The] new US administration must realize that our Palestinian people will continue to resist the hateful [Israeli] occupation and will not accept any path that detracts from their legitimate rights to freedom, independence, self-determination, and the establishment of their independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,’ the terrorist group added.
Hamas also stated they believed Trump is ‘required to listen to the voices that have been raised by the US public for more than a year regarding the [Israeli] aggression on the Gaza Strip’.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – a rival of Hamas – congratulated Trump on his election as US president. He said he would cooperate with the new administration to reach regional peace.
‘We will remain steadfast in our commitment to peace, and we are confident that the United States will support, under your leadership, the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people,’ Abbas said in a statement.
But Palestinian residents are not as optimistic, with some expressing fear over Trump’s election victory.
Abu Osama, who has been displaced by unrelenting Israeli bombardments, called Trump’s win a ‘new catastrophe in the history of the Palestinian people’.
‘Despite the destruction, death, and displacement that we have witnessed, what is coming will be more difficult, it will be politically devastating,’ he told reporters in Khan Younis.
Some Palestinians said they did not see much difference between Trump and defeated candidate Kamala Harris, but Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel during his first term showed he was more biased towards Israel.
‘We, as Arabs and Palestinians, will not be naive enough. We have to deal with him as an enemy. We have to determine who is the enemy. They are enemies,’ said Khaled Dasouso, owner of a grocery in Khan Younis.
Meanwhile, some held on to some hope.
‘I think (Donald) Trump if he wins, what he doing, he promised the Muslim people in America to stop the war in Gaza. ‘We hope that happens,’ said Gaza engineer Mohammed Barghouthi.
More than 43,300 Palestinians have been killed in more than a year of war in Gaza, health authorities in the enclave say, and much of the territory has been laid to waste.
The war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Efforts by the United States and Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt have so far failed to arrange a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that would end the fighting and see the release of Israeli and foreign hostages in Gaza as well as Palestinians jailed by Israel.
President Joe Biden’s administration has provided Israel with unflinching diplomatic support and military aid even as Secretary of State Antony Blinken worked on ceasefire proposals. Trump’s future policy is not yet clear although he was supportive of Israel in his previous term as president.
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