Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting that our enemies “want to destroy the state,” in comments following a speech by Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Saturday reiterating his movement’s refusal to “give up one inch of the land of Palestine.”
Mashaal, who was speaking to Hamas supporters during a rally in Gaza City marking the 25th anniversary of the Islamist movement’s founding, said: “Palestine from the river to the sea, from the north to the south, is our land and we will never give up one inch or any part of it.”
Behind the Hamas leader stood a huge emblem of an M75 missile and a large portrait of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin. As he spoke, the crowd chanted slogans calling on Hamas’s armed wing, Izzadin Kassam, to fire rockets next time at Haifa.
“Palestine was, still is and will always be Arab and Islamic,” Mashaal said. “Palestine belongs to us and to no one else. We can never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Palestine belongs to us, and not to the Zionists.”
He vowed not to give up the right to “liberate” Jaffa, Haifa, Safed and Beersheba. Political and diplomatic efforts, as well as mass and legal movements, were “worthless” unless they were accompanied by armed struggle, he said, calling for ending the dispute between Hamas and Fatah.
“The division is a national disaster,” he said, appealing to Arab and Islamic countries to give the Palestinians money and weapons, in addition to political support.
At the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said: "Yesterday we were re-exposed to our enemies'' true face. They have no intention of compromising with us, they want to destroy the state. They will fail, of course. In the annals of the history of our people, we – the Jewish People – have overcome such enemies.”
"Khaled Mashaal has revealed Hamas'' real face," he added.