Hamas Emphasizes Resistance
Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades have held two military parades in recent weeks and intensified its resistance rhetoric as problems with Egypt and Israel escalate.
GAZA — There is renewed talk in Gaza about returning to resistance operations against Israel. Of particular note, within the span of two weeks, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, conducted two parades in which other resistance factions participated. In addition, Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy chairman of the movement’s political bureau, wrote on Sept. 7 on his Facebook page, “Those who claim that Hamas has abandoned the resistance are deluded.”
Abu Marzouk asserted that Hamas has not supplanted the resistance project in favor of a negotiated settlement with Israel and claimed that Hamas’ forces, which numbered in the hundreds in the past, are now in the thousands. According to him, clashing with Israel is the norm for Hamas, truces are the exception, and Hamas has been training, developing and preparing its people for resistance until liberation and the return of the refugees.
In another Facebook posting from the same day, Abu Marzouk said that the cease-fire negotiated with Israel in November 2012, during Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi's tenure, was an agreement to calm things down, not a truce. On Sept. 9, a few days after his statement, the main headline in the Hamas-affiliated Al-Resalah read, “The Resistance Mobilizes and the Siege Tightens.”
The military parades took place on Aug. 22 in Rafah, in southern Gaza, and on Sept. 9, in northern Gaza. They were in response to the decision by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to return to negotiations with Israel. They also apparently had another purpose, as many who participants gave the four-finger salute — the symbol of the Rabia al-Adawiya Square protests during which hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed by Egyptian government forces. As a result of the latter, some factions that had agreed to join the al-Qassam Brigades parade in the north decided to withdraw, because they considered such a gesture interfering in Egyptian affairs.
