“The Zionist enemy has no future on the Palestinian land,” Haniyeh said in an interview with Qatar’s Al-Jazeera television network, the Palestinian Information Center reported.
He reiterated the Palestinians’ right to return to their homeland from which they were displaced, adding, “Palestine will remain alive in the conscience of the (Palestinian) people and the Arab and Muslim nation.”
Some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their lands in 1948 and scattered across refugee camps in the occupied West Bank, the besieged Gaza Strip, and Palestine’s neighboring countries. Over five million Palestinian refugees are currently estimated to be still displaced.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Haniyeh noted that the issue of release of the Palestinian detainees from Israeli jails has been one of the primary concerns of Hamas since its 1987 establishment. For Hamas, the issue is “a national issue par excellence, regardless of their political affiliation”, the movement’s head said.
There are thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Human rights organizations say Israel violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Geneva Convention. Israeli jail authorities keep Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards.
Palestinian inmates have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.