Op-ed slams Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s threatening to intervene in a war against Iran or Hezbollah, which would be against the Palestinians’ interests

Excerpt of an op-ed by Muwaffaq Matar, regular columnist for the official PA daily

Headline: “Proxy war”

“Islamic Jihad leaders threatened to enter into a confrontation with the Israeli occupation army and punish it in the event of aggression towards what they described as ‘the axis of resistance’ and the outbreak of a battle between [the Israeli army] and Hezbollah.

A few weeks ago, the deputy chairman of the political bureau of the Muslim Brotherhood organization’s Palestine branch, which is known as ‘Hamas,’ said that his organization is ‘on Iran’s first line of defense’! …

The most important thing [for Hamas and Islamic Jihad] – before any consideration for the value of the Palestinians and the sanctity of their lives – is to unhesitatingly execute the demands of the funder, even at the cost of smashing the Palestinian people’s supreme interests and increasing meaningless and unnecessary death…

However, the most important question is what is the position of those who remain without a roof after their homes were destroyed in all of Hamas’ wars since 2007? What is the position of those who lost their children, and of the young people who lost their limbs? …

Will they agree to turning the Gaza Strip into a large slaughterhouse, where the Gazans are slaughtered and skinned to be sold as fresh meat in Tehran’s bazaar? …

‘The agents of war’ can get the Gaza Strip with its two million Palestinian residents into a war that the Palestinian people and its lawful leadership have not chosen, but we and the masses of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip must… restrain them and prevent them from committing this crime of treachery in every sense of the word. Proxy wars are treachery, but if they insist on doing this they will be tantamount to those who have decreed upon themselves the entailed punishment."