The terror and Islamic forces in the Gaza Strip announced Saturday the establishment of the “National Committee for the Support of the Palestinian People Inside,” meaning Arabs and Bedouin in Israel.
The announcement of the establishment of the new committee came as part of an event held at a site from which marches to the Gaza border fence and clashes with the IDF have taken place in recent years.
Senior figures from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, including Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesman, and Khaled al-Batash, a senior Islamic Jihad official, spoke at the ceremony.
Al-Batash said the establishment of the committee was a continuation of the so-called “return marches” and the “Sword of Jerusalem,” known in Israel as Operation Guardian of the Walls, and stressed that “the Palestinians within Israeli territory are not alone in the resistance.”
The Hamas spokesman said at the event that “today, the meeting of national and Islamic forces in Gaza is a historic event and the announcement of the establishment of a committee to support Israeli Arabs is intended to prove that our people are indivisible. Gaza is today presenting a new national model in the face of the occupation and we will work together.”
The representative of the Islamic Jihad added that “there is a great plan that directs our people inside (in Israel) and Gaza.”
Representatives of Israeli Arabs welcomed the establishment of the committee at the initiative of terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip.
Atiyah al-‘Atzem, head of the regional council of the unrecognized villages in the Negev, welcomed the establishment of the committee and told the “Palestine Online” website, “We welcome and support any body that stands by us in the Negev in order to achieve our rights.”
Atzem added that “the residents of the Negev desperately need everyone who stands by them in the face of the behavior of the ‘Israeli occupation’ against them. The feeling in the Negev is that the Palestinian brothers are by our side morally and will strengthen our determination to continue the struggle for victory for the land and the homeland. In recent years, we have felt alone in opposing the occupier who is working to uproot us from our lands, but over the past year the Palestinian media seems to have brought the voice of the villages in the Negev to the forefront of the local and international stage and encouraged them to continue the struggle.”
Juma’a A-Zabarka, Member of the 20th Knesset on behalf of the Balad Party and the Joint List, and a Member of the Monitoring Committee of Israeli Arabs, praised in an interview with the Al-Aqsa Channel operating from Gaza, the standing of the Gaza people alongside the “occupied inside ” and a member of the political bureau of the Bnei Kfar movement, Louis Khatib, said that “the initiative of the factions in Gaza is a step towards the continuation of the struggle against the occupation.”
