A Palestinian youth salvages a toy from the rubble of his house which was destroyed during the latest three days of conflict with Israel ahead of a truce, in Rafah town in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 8, 2022. (Photo by AFP)
Tehran, August 10 (RHC)-- Iran's foreign minister has lauded the Palestinian resistance’s “great achievement” in standing up to Israel’s massive assaults and forcing the regime into agreeing to a truce.
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks in a Monday phone call with Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau of the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas, according to a statement by the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
Major flare-ups in the occupied territories led to an Israeli incursion into the besieged Gaza Strip on Friday with the regime hitting what it claimed to be a series of military targets in Gaza. The Islamic Jihad movement also responded by launching hundreds of rockets toward the occupied territories, sending Israelis in southern occupied territories including Tel Aviv into shelters.
A truce brokered by the Egyptian mediators between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza went into effect at 11:30 pm local time (2030 GMT) on Sunday, as the movement said it “reserves the right to respond to any Zionist aggression.”
“That once again the resistance was able to withstand the Zionist regime’s full-scale military assault and forced them into agreeing to a truce and complying with the resistance’s conditions is a great achievement,” Amir-Abdollahian said. He further explained that what matters is the fact that only a division of resistance confronted the enemy which reveals the Zionist regime’s weakness and frailty more than ever.
The senior diplomat lauded Haniyeh’s stance in keeping resistance groups unanimous and described it as a “great success” for the axis of resistance.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement after the three-day Israeli aggression that at least 44, including 15 children, have been killed and more than 350 civilians wounded.
The Palestinian resistance movement says the fight against Israel will last until the occupied territories are liberated. Haniyeh, for his part, appreciated Iran’s support for Palestine, saying that Israel had planned to force its will on the Palestinians and resistance in the Gaza Strip but was confronted with the “Palestinian nation’s victorious resistance.”
“The resistance front’s recent victory has opened a new chapter in the Palestinian resistance confrontation with the Zionist regime,” the top resistance official stated, adding “we will continue the fight to achieve total victory.”
Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, has also criticized the international community’s inaction in holding Israel accountable for its crimes. “Days have passed since the fanatic Israeli regime waged an incessant deadly blitz on innocent Palestinians. The question is, how many children have to die so that the international community, UNSC & HRC hold the bloodthirsty regime accountable for its’ unspeakable crimes?” the top human rights official wrote on his Twitter account on Tuesday.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani also said that the Israeli regime is doomed to failure and cannot run away from its “inevitable fate” by killing children. “Over the recent Zionist regime’s assault on Gaza, 15 Palestinian children were martyred. By killing children, the child-killing regime cannot escape its inevitable fate, which is failure and decline,” he wrote in a Persian language tweet on Monday.
“Undoubtedly, in the near future, the brothers and sisters of the [murdered] children will see their homeland’s freedom from the hands of the bloodthirsty occupiers,” he added.
The recent Israeli attacks against Gaza mark one of the most serious escalations between Israel and Palestinian resistance groups since the 11-day war, dubbed Operation al-Quds Sword, in May 2021. That war killed at least 250 people in Gaza, including 66 children.
