The following statement comes from Senior Hamas leader Osama Hamdan to Al-Jazeera on Sept. 2, 2024, and published by Resistance News Network. There is nothing new except what we hear in the media and what is being discussed with mediators about the U.S. president's intention to present a new prop

Netanyahu knows that the ongoing battle in Gaza has not extinguished the Palestinian people’s steadfastness and resistance, and today it is intensifying in the West Bank. If things continue as they are, I believe the situation will escalate to a point where neither Netanyahu nor his supporters can contain it.

The only way to stop this aggression is for Netanyahu to accept the initiative presented and approved by the [Hamas] movement. Otherwise, the world must see that the “israelis” are overstepping their bounds, and there must be a complete and decisive stop to the aggression.

The Palestinians are doing their part in defending themselves, putting the entire world in front of a significant question regarding the seriousness of the world in stopping the ongoing genocide. Today I compare the world’s outcry over the killing of six “israeli” captives — whom we wanted to return alive so that our prisoners could return to their families — to the world’s silence over the massacre of 50,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, as if nothing happened.

Are the lives of six “israeli” captives more valuable to the world than the lives of 50,000 Palestinians? This raises questions about all the humanitarian values, the values of freedom, justice, equality and human rights that some claim to uphold but only cry out for when the victim is “israeli.”

The enemy clearly intends to declare the West Bank a battlefield, and the map Netanyahu presented did not include the West Bank and Al-Quds but rather depicted the entirety of Palestine as part of the occupation entity.

This means that the plan Netanyahu and his government devised to seize the West Bank is still entrenched in the minds of this government, and they are committed to it. Declaring the West Bank a battlefield means that he has failed to eliminate the resistance, which he thought he could succeed in within hours or maybe a day or two.

The military operation in the northern West Bank was not expected by “israel” to last as long as it has or for the resistance to perform so effectively. Moreover, they did not expect the resistance to mobilize in other parts of the West Bank as happened in Al-Khalil. The West Bank is now mobilizing, and resistance is escalating and advancing.

The crime “israel” is committing by declaring the West Bank in a state of war does not necessarily mean the fighting will stop. I recall that during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, everything “israel” did did not stop the resistance; instead, it accelerated and led to the withdrawal of the occupation from Gaza. Perhaps the confrontation in the West Bank will also push for additional withdrawals in this phase.