Hamas: Any foreign force entering Gaza will be regarded an occupation force

June 14, 2007

GAZA, (PIC)-- In a press release on Thursday, Hamas totally rejected the idea of allowing any foreign troops into the Gaza Strip, regardless of their nationality, confirming that Hamas "will consider them as occupation forces."

"The repeated statements about deployment of international forces in the Gaza Strip, the latest of which were (EU foreign relations coordinator) Javier Solana's statements, are unacceptable, and any foreign forces regardless of their nationality being admitted into the Strip will be regarded as occupation forces," Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas leader stated.

He affirmed that the goal of sending such foreign troops into the Strip is only to eliminate the Palestinian resistance and to serve the Zionist occupation, considering it a "blatant foreign interference in favor of a Palestinian party against another."

Solana had called in press statements for dispatching international forces to Gaza to stop the internal fighting and to stop the rockets fired by Palestinian factions at the Zionist settlements.


A Hamas resistance fighter fires an RPG at the headquarters of Fatah’s Preventive Security Service in Gaza.Mohammed Saber/European Pressphoto Agency