Press TV exclusive: Senior Hamas official says Israel's Rafah invasion will end in failure

A senior official of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas says the planned ground invasion by the Israeli regime against the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip will certainly end in failure.

"They failed in [achieving] all of their goals. They had only one thing left and that is the attack on Rafah. Its result will also be a failure," Osama Hamdan, the movement's senior representative in Lebanon, said in an exclusive interview with Press TV's Face to Face program.

The Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war against Gaza since last October following Operation al-Aqsa Storm by the coastal territory's resistance groups against the occupied territories.

More than 29,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have lost their lives in the regime's brutal military onslaught, which has left over 69,000 others injured.

Last week, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to evacuate civilians from the city of Rafah ahead of a planned ground operation, despite the fact that the city is now packed with around 1.5 million Palestinian refugees.

Hamdan asserted that "any move that Netanyahu makes to attack Rafah will be faced by the resistance," adding, "The enemy will realize at some point that it is unable to succeed."

"The Americans realize this issue and, therefore, [they] are trying to persuade the Israelis to accept a ceasefire," he noted.

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The Israeli minister for military affairs threatened that Israel will not slow or stop its operation in Gaza.

"Al-Aqsa Storm a success, confronted Netanyahu's project"

The Hamas' official said the October 7 operation by Gaza's resistance movements was a total success, adding that it was a "success in carrying out a large-scale operation without the enemy being able to take action preemptively."

The operation, he added, confronted a project harbored by Netanyahu to "end the Palestinian issue within the next four years."

Describing the project, Hamdan said the Israeli premier had developed a program to seize the occupied city of al-Quds whose eastern part is sought by Palestinians as the capital of their future state.

The project also sought to "transfer ownership of Palestinians' real estate to Zionists," he said, noting that the Israeli prime minister also contemplated bringing in one million new settlers from outside of Palestine to the occupied territories.

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"US serves as pillar of Zionism"

Elsewhere in his remarks, Hamdan noted that the United States is not only supporting Israel, but is also "a partner [with the regime] in crime, [and] a partner in genocide."

"It may appear to support Israel politically, but in practice, it provides ammunition, equipment, and weapons to the Zionist entity. It also employs all technological facilities in discovering tunnels and thus serves as the pillar of Zionism," the Hamas official said.

The United States has been providing Israel with unbridled military and political support during its onslaught on Gaza, arming Tel Aviv with more than 10,000 tons of military hardware. The US has also torpedoed the prospect of cessation of the Israeli aggression by stonewalling ratification of all UN Security Council resolutions that called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

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"Only Gazans will decide Gaza's future"

The Hamas' official, meanwhile, dismissed all the so-called "post-war plans" that have been floated by the Israeli regime and its Western supporters.

"The Palestinian people are the ones who elect and who choose their leadership through free elections," he said, noting, "Those who decide [what happens] the next day in Gaza are the Palestinian people alone."

"America cannot change this fact and we do not accept its interference in our internal affairs."

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Hamas has denounced White House spokesperson John Kirby’s comments about post-war administrative control over Gaza as “flagrant interference” in the domestic affairs of Palestinians.

"Hamas does not fight Israelis because they're Jews"

Adding to his remarks, the Hamas' representative in Lebanon explained that the movement does not "fight the Israelis because they are Jews."

"We're fighting them because they're occupiers of our land, meaning if they leave our land, we will not pursue them and we will not fight them," he added.

Notwithstanding, the Palestinian official expressed certitude that "the occupation will end and we, as Muslims, will certainly be able to end it."

On regional resistance's support for Gaza

Hamdan finally commented on the support given to Gaza by regional resistance groups since the initiation of the Israeli aggression against the territory, which has seen Lebanese, Yemeni, and Iraqi resistance movements launching numerous retaliatory attacks against Israeli and American targets.

"Strategically, I believe that the resistance in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq has achieved two goals. First, it has sent a message that the resistance [axis] in the region is united and works in its own way, and not according to what others want. Its method is effective," he said.

"The second issue is that this axis has a firm principled position and is using its capabilities in an intelligent and wise manner, and is capable of achieving results," the Hamas' official said.

Hamdan concluded, "This means that the future of the region will not be [determined] according to what the United States or the Zionist entity want. Rather, we're approaching a stage that the future of the region will be [determined] according to what the people of the region want."

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