Hamas: Israel will fail to blackmail us through kidnapping our leaders in WB

The Hamas Movement highlighted Thursday that the kidnapping campaign waged by Israel against its leaders in the West Bank and the threats to escalate violations against Palestinian prisoners would never succeed in blackmailing it into making concessions on the prisoner swap deal or any issues related to the rights of the Palestinian people.

Dr. Salah Al-Bardawil, the spokesman for the Hamas parliamentary bloc, underlined in an exclusive statement to the PIC that all these repressive measures are exposed attempts to pressure Hamas and force it to release the Israeli captive soldier without any price.

Dr. Bardawil said that these Israeli attempts would be doomed to failure like previous ones because Hamas never retreated from its positions regarding the Palestinian rights and constants.

For his part, Dr. Ahmed Bahar, the acting speaker of the PLC, strongly denounced the kidnapping campaign waged by Israel against Hamas leaders and lawmakers in the West Bank, saying that this campaign is aimed to blackmail the Palestinian resistance into making concessions on the issues of occupied Jerusalem and prisoners and also accepting the international quartet”s terms

In an exclusive statement to the PIC, Dr. Bahar, who is currenlty in Doha in line with a tour of a number of Arab and Muslim countries, called on the Palestinian resistance to cling to its demands regarding the swap deal and not to bow to Israel”s blackmails.

In the same context, Abdel-Nasser Farwana, a specialist in prisoners” affairs, stated Wednesday that the IOA recently introduced new measures against Palestinian prisoners that are more repressive than the violations committed against detainees in Guantanamo prison.

Farwana added that the IOA escalated its blatant violations of international law regarding the rights of Palestinian prisoners in its jails and also stepped up its use of the terms “unlawful combatant” and “enemy combatants” against Gaza prisoners in an unprecedented way, which means they lost their basic rights mentioned in the Geneva convention and their detention would continue endlessly.

In another context, media sources reported that the IOA expanded the detention of three Hamas lawmakers and added six months to their previous sentences issued against them.

The family of imprisoned MP Mohamed Attal said that the IOA expanded his sentence from 38 to 44 months. The IOA also added six months to the sentences previously issued against MPs Fadl Hamdan and Khalil Al-Rabe”i.