Hamas: We won't surrender or violate truce

Ma'an – Hamas politburo member Salah Al-Bardawil said Sunday that “Israel apparently approved the truce with Palestinian factions,” affirming that “factions will be committed to truce as long as Israel is committed as well.”

Al-Bardawil affirmed in a statement that the “Palestinian resistance will not accept surrender”, noting that “the Palestinian government in Gaza sent letters to a number of Arab and international parties including the UN, the Arab League, the Egyptian government and some European countries demanding that they curb the Israeli assault on Gaza.”

He noted that “these parties contacted Israel demanding that it stop its attacks on Gaza, to which Israel had apparently responded by saying that it would stop shelling Gaza.”

He said “the Palestinian factions do not want to drag the Palestinians to war amidst the changes taking place in Arab countries without media outlets focusing on Gaza, so they accepted the truce.”

He noted that “the Palestinian factions agreed previously on a unilateral truce entitled ‘committed as long as the enemy is’ but the [Israeli] occupation violated this truce by killing children and women, and the resistance responded in a limited way making the occupation hit back much more harshly in its aggression.”