Senior Hamas leader Osama Hamdan at Hamas’ press conference today, May 7, 2024, issued this statement.

In response to the zionist attack on the Rafah crossing, we call on the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to convene an urgent meeting at the level of foreign ministers, to take an immediate and effective stance to stop this violation and compel the occupation to halt its aggression against our people and our nation.

We highly appreciate the stance of our brothers in the Arab Republic of Egypt in condemning the occupation’s bombing and occupation of the Rafah crossing, and we value their rejection of the occupation’s request to open the crossing under these conditions, insisting on the previous mechanism. We affirm that the Rafah crossing was and will remain a purely Egyptian-Palestinian passage, with no presence of any occupying force.

Netanyahu and his Nazi government must understand that the movement and the Palestinian resistance will not respond to any initiative to stop the aggression or any prisoner exchange deal under military pressure and escalation of aggression, and that these illusions will vanish into thin air.

We call on the United Nations and the international community to pressure the occupation to stop this escalation that threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians in Rafah and across the Gaza Strip, as well as threatens all efforts by mediators to stop the aggression and genocide.

We assert that the military operation in Rafah, if pursued by the enemy, will not be a walk in the park for the terrorist occupation army, which will ultimately drag the tails of failure and exit humiliated as it did in all areas it entered in the Gaza Strip, where it was humiliated by the hands of the fighters of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Saraya Al-Quds, and the Palestinian resistance.