Hamas: We Will Never Give Up Armed Resistance

Over 300,000 Hamas supporters marched in Gaza on Wednesday to mark the Palestinian resistance group’s 24th anniversary.

Addressing the rally, Hamas’ government chief Ismail Haniyeh said the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups had “spearheaded the Arab Spring” of political change in the region “either through direct confrontation with tyrannical regimes or through the ballot box.”

Hamas had recently announced the establishment of the Palestine branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Haniyeh also dismissed reports that Hamas had agree to give up the armed resistance with the framework of the Palestinian reconciliation deal with Fatah. “They say Hamas was dropped from the line of resistance, but armed resistance is the way and it is Hamas’s strategic choice to liberate Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea and to remove the invaders from the blessed land of Palestine,” Haniyeh told the crowd. “Hamas, together with other stubborn resistance factions, will lead the people towards uprising after uprising until all of Palestine is liberated,” Haniyeh said.

And he added: “Hamas was born from the womb of the Palestinian people. The launch 24 years ago was the culmination of a long process of education, preparation and advocacy in the school of the Muslim Brotherhood.”