Hamas rejects Israeli call for displacing Gaza’s population

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AA) – Hamas rejected Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s comments Tuesday about the displacement of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

“We tell Smotrich and his likes that we are the ones who will stay on this land,” senior Hamas member Osama Hemdan said at a press conference in Beirut.

He accused the Israeli army of deliberately targeting hospitals to push Palestinians into “forced migration.”

“The (Israeli) occupation targets hospitals, health centers and infrastructure in Gaza to deprive our people of basic services and necessities and push them to forcibly migrate, in a repetition of the scenes of the Nakba of 1948,” he said.

Smotrich said Tuesday that “voluntary migration” of Palestinians in Gaza is the “right humanitarian solution” for the besieged enclave and the region.

Israel has launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7.

It has killed at least 11,240 Palestinians, including more than 7,800 women and children, and injured over 29,200 others, according to the latest figures from Palestinian authorities.

Thousands of buildings, including hospitals, mosques and churches, have also been damaged or destroyed in the Israeli offensive.

The Israeli death toll, meanwhile, is nearly 1,200, according to official figures.