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Hamas says it wants no war with Israel

Xinhua, May 7, 2016 Adjust font size:

A senior Hamas leader said on Friday that his movement does not want to renew confrontation with Israel, yet demanding an end to its activities in Gaza.

"We do not want war, but we will not allow the occupation to build a buffer zone at the Gaza Strip borderline and to impose its equation on the ground," Ismail Haneya, deputy chief of the Islamic Hamas movement, told worshipers in a sermon following the Friday prayers in central Gaza.

Haneya blamed the tensions in the Strip over the past two days on Israel's "incursion" under the pretext of "searching of tunnels."

He noted that Hamas has sent multiple messages through mediators, including Egypt, Qatar, UN Middle East Special Coordinator Nicholas Mladenov and Turkey, adding that the movement will not allow Israel to impose a new equation in the coastal enclave under the terms of the truce, which was sponsored by Egypt in the summer of 2014.

Palestinian sources and witnesses told Xinhua that Israeli war jets and tanks shelled Friday morning agricultural lands east of Khan Younis south of Gaza Strip.

The sources said that the Israeli war jets fired one rocket at farm land, followed by tank shelling, without reporting any injuries.

The Israeli public radio said that the war jets resumed raids on Hamas targets in response to continued rocket firing towards the Israeli forces that are carrying out works near the security barrier surrounding the Gaza Strip in search of tunnels.

A Palestinian woman was killed and four others wounded, including three children, after the Israeli shelling and airstrikes started against the coastal enclave three days ago, along with Palestinian rocket firing towards Israeli forces stationed at the borderline. Endit