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Hamas founder: ‘Arab nation will not forgive those who seek ties with Israel’

Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar said “the Arab nation will not forgive those who normalize relations with Israel” and “settlements must be uprooted by all possible means.”

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

One of the founding members of the Hamas terror group called Tuesday for Palestinians to “blow up” Israel’s planned annexation of settlements and launch a new armed uprising, Channel 13 reported.

“The annexation project must be blown up and an intifada launched to displace settlements from anywhere in Palestine by any means possible,” Hamas political leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said at a conference in Gaza.

“The Arab nation will not forgive anyone who normalizes relations with Israel. We warn the Zionist entity of the dangerous consequences of the annexation and the deal of the century,” al-Zahar said, referring to the Trump peace deal.

Iran-backed Hamas rejects any peace plan and is committed to destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamic state.

An unnamed member of Jordan’s parliament who attended the meeting said he had demanded several times to expel the Israeli ambassador from Jordan and return the kingdom’s envoy from Tel Aviv, as well as canceling Jordan’s peace agreement with Israel.

In the second armed uprising by Palestinians in 2000-2005, Hamas and other terror groups carried out waves of suicide bombings and shooting attacks that killed over 1,000 Israelis.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the Trump administration wants the  annexation process to take place internally within the Israeli government, so there could be a situation where the annexation process “will not happen in one go” but will be carried out in stages.  Netanyahu made the comments at a meeting with a group of senior reserve IDF officers, according to officials who were present.

At a separate meeting with leaders of the “Bitchonistim” (security) movement who support the annexation, Netanyahu said he wanted to annex all of the 30 percent of Judea and Samaria allocated to Israel as part of the Trump peace plan, including the Jordan Valley.

However, Netanyahu acknowledged that there was no agreement on this yet with Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi.

“Netanyahu said that the discourse now is about how the move is carried out, and he emphasized that it depends on the internal negotiations that will take place within the government,” said one of the officials who took part in the meeting.

At a Likud faction meeting earlier this week, Netanyahu reportedly said he was not ready to bring the Trump plan to the cabinet and the Knesset because he did not know what the position of Gantz’s Blue and White Party is concerning annexation.