Official PA daily criticizes Hamas for bringing "pointless death, destruction" on Gaza
Op-ed by Muwaffaq Matar, regular columnist for Al-Hayat Al-Jadida
“Were you pleased by the extermination of [entire] families and the erasing of the names of family members from the records? Were you pleased by the houses that were brought down on the heads of their innocent inhabitants as they slept?!
It seems your conscience is not bothering you, since you haven’t seen the body parts of children and women, or their tender bodies charred [by fire]. How could you have seen them, having fortified yourselves in a tangled network of tunnels and shelters, leaving two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip exposed, as the eagles of [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu’s army devoured them?! If you saw any value in the Palestinian people, you would not have gone to the media with your speeches, spreading illusions of victory to thousands of wounded, injured and bereaved, and hundreds of thousands of displaced [people]! ... If Palestinian people had any place in your hearts, you would not be seeking to copy this experience to the West Bank – for by doing so, you, as an armed faction, are reserving for yourselves the decision to go to war, to minimize the [importance of the] will of the people, and to recreate the experience of pointless death, destruction, uprooting and the selling of our blood to the countries of the region!”
Note: This article was published shortly after a ceasefire was reached between Israel and Hamas, concluding the 2014 Gaza war.
“Were you pleased by the extermination of [entire] families and the erasing of the names of family members from the records? Were you pleased by the houses that were brought down on the heads of their innocent inhabitants as they slept?!
It seems your conscience is not bothering you, since you haven’t seen the body parts of children and women, or their tender bodies charred [by fire]. How could you have seen them, having fortified yourselves in a tangled network of tunnels and shelters, leaving two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip exposed, as the eagles of [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu’s army devoured them?! If you saw any value in the Palestinian people, you would not have gone to the media with your speeches, spreading illusions of victory to thousands of wounded, injured and bereaved, and hundreds of thousands of displaced [people]! ... If Palestinian people had any place in your hearts, you would not be seeking to copy this experience to the West Bank – for by doing so, you, as an armed faction, are reserving for yourselves the decision to go to war, to minimize the [importance of the] will of the people, and to recreate the experience of pointless death, destruction, uprooting and the selling of our blood to the countries of the region!”
Note: This article was published shortly after a ceasefire was reached between Israel and Hamas, concluding the 2014 Gaza war.