In a fiery speech laced with defiance and bellicose rhetoric, a top Hamas commander issued a rousing call to arms on Tuesday, urging Palestinian militants to escalate violence across multiple fronts in their bloody conflict with Israel.
The pugnacious remarks from Abu Ubaida, the spokesman for the armed wing of the Gaza-based Hamas militant group, came on a tense milestone – the 200th day since the latest refusing war erupted last October. Despite intensive cease-fire efforts by mediators, the streets of Gaza have continued to smolder with violence.
Praising Iran’s audacious drone and missile strikes against Israel earlier this month as a game-changing development, Ubaida demanded Hamas fighters ratchet up hostilities not just in the battered Gaza Strip but in the West Bank and Jordan as well.
“We call on the Jordanian people to step up their actions and raise their voices,” the Hamas firebrand bellowed in a televised speech aired on Al Jazeera. “Jordan is one of the most important Arab fronts.”
His brazen exhortations seemed to defy the diplomatic corps working to restore calm after 34,000 Palestinian deaths and the capture of over 250 Israeli hostages since last fall’s outbreak of war.
But prospects for peace remain dim as Hamas refuses to soften its hardcore demands – insisting Israel must end its military operation, withdraw forces from Gaza, allow displaced Palestinians to return, and lift its crippling blockade of the coastal enclave.
“The government of the occupation is stalling in reaching a hostage-swap deal and is trying to obstruct efforts by the mediators to reach a ceasefire agreement,” Ubaida railed.
The defiant speech capped a day of rising regional tensions after Jordan’s military said it had intercepted and destroyed dozens of Iranian drones heading for Israeli airspace – a stark reminder of how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict risks erupting into a wider conflagration.
As Qatari and Egyptian negotiators pursue an elusive truce, Hamas’ unyielding rhetoric and perpetual demand for violence suggests the militant group has no intention of backing down from its confrontation with Israel any time soon.
For ordinary Gazans trapped in the crossfire, the unrelenting chaos and Ubaida’s inflammatory words embody the tragic reality that relief from the prolonged nightmare remains nowhere in sight.
