RAMALLAH, June 27, 2018 (WAFA) – Mahmoud Aloul, deputy chairman of Fatah movement, said on Tuesday that the Palestinian people will not allow the humanitarian situation in Gaza to override the Palestinian basic national rights.

Aloul said in an interview with Palestine TV that "we are ready to starve but will not be ready that in return for resolving our humanitarian situation to give up Jerusalem and our basic rights." He was referring to US attempts to look at the situation in the Gaza Strip as a humanitarian rather than political issue,

He said that the Americans, through their so-called deal of the century, “believed that they could pressure us through some friends and brothers, but the Palestinian position was firm and intractable, which encouraged all the Arab brothers to take a good and positive stand with the US delegation that visited the region. They told them very clearly that it is the cause of the Palestinians and the US will not find anyone to cooperate with it, particularly among the Palestinians in the (occupied territories).”

Aloul said some Hamas officials seem to have found resonance with this matter, wondering “why would Hamas officials talk about the legitimacy of negotiations with the Israeli occupation and the enemy and about a long-term truce at this particular time? This makes us very suspicious."

Yet, he said, while some in Hamas seem ready to go along with the American vision for the area, “we do not deny the existence of nationalists (in Hamas) who cannot accept the separation of the Gaza Strip from the rest of Palestine.”

M.K.