This file photo shows a Palestinian girl behind a whole at her destroyed family's house, Gaza City, Oct. 8, 2020. (via Photo)
Gaza City, June 26 (RHC)-- The Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, has hailed recent remarks by a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who called for the full lifting of Israel’s years-long blockade on the impoverished Gaza Strip.
In a statement issued in Gaza City, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the UN official's remarks revealed once again the extent of the suffering of the more than two million Palestinians as a result of the unjust siege that clearly violates international law and human rights.
"We call on the UN and all human rights and international organizations to take all these statements and reports seriously, work to intensify efforts to end the suffering of our Palestinian people and to pressure the Zionist occupying regime to lift its siege," Hamas said.
He further stressed the need to "end the policy of apartheid practiced by the Zionist occupation against our Palestinian people."
A senior member of Hamas has warned that the Palestinian resistance movement will use various means to pressure Israel if the siege on the Gaza Strip continues.
Hamas Political Bureau member Mousa Abu Marzouk and other senior officials have said the Palestinian resistance will finally succeed in having the siege lifted on the Gaza Strip and commence its reconstruction.
Last Tuesday, Stephane Dujarric called for the complete removal of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, in line with a 2009 UN Security Council resolution. "Today is the 15th anniversary of the beginning of the blockade in the Gaza Strip," Dujarric said during a press briefing held at the UN headquarters in New York.
"Due to poverty, high unemployment and other factors caused by the blockade, about 80 percent of Gaza's population depends on humanitarian aid. "This year, $510 million is needed to provide food, water, sanitation and health care for 1.6 million people, and we now have only 25 per cent of that," he added.
In the latest Israeli bombardment campaign against the Gaza Strip, at least 260 Palestinians, including over 60 children, were killed in a time span of 11 days that began on May 10 last year.
That came following Palestinian retaliation for violent Israeli raids on worshipers at al-Aqsa Mosque and the regime’s plans to force a number of Palestinian families out of their homes at the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East al-Quds.
