Hamas invites Hezbollah to join in fighting against Israel

Khaled Mashaal’s top deputy told Russian media that the organization hoped that the Lebanese Shi’ite group would engage Israel from the north.

By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (R) and Hamas deputy political bureau chief Moussa Abu Marzouk‏ (photo credit: REUTERS)
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (R) and Hamas deputy political bureau chief Moussa Abu Marzouk‏
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Hamas wants Hezbollah to join the three-week-old conflict with Israel, Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, said in an interview.
Marzouk, who is based in Cairo, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti on Tuesday that the organization hoped that the Lebanese Shi’ite group would engage Israel from the north.
“We hope the Lebanese front will open and together we will fight against this formation [Israel],” Marzouk said adding, “there’s no arguing that Lebanese resistance could mean a lot.”
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said last week, “We in Hezbollah will be unstinting in all forms of support, assistance and aid that we are able to provide.”
“We feel we are true partners with this resistance, a partnership of jihad, brotherhood, hope, pain, sacrifice and fate, because their victory is our victory, and their defeat is our defeat,” he said.
“Doha and Ankara have sided with the Palestinian people to help them. We are grateful for the support they extended to the people of Palestine in political, diplomatic and economic spheres,” Marzouk said in the interview.
“As far as the situation on the battlefield goes, we are winning,” he told RIA Novosti. “Yes, the correlation of forces is beyond comparison, but we have men who are capable of stopping and vanquishing the aggressor.”
He mentioned that Hamas holds Israeli soldier Oron Shaul in Gaza and seeks to use the strategy of prisoner exchanges to help achieve its goals.
However, the chief rabbi of the IDF concluded based on forensic evidence that Shaul was killed in action, though his body is missing.
Regarding negotiations, Marzouk said that Hamas would welcome Russia as a mediator for the war stating, “We have only trust and respect for Russia. We would welcome Russia’s role. We trust it more than the United States.”
Separately, a Hamas sermon in the Deir al-Balah Mosque in Gaza, airing on the terrorist group’s al-Aksa TV station on Friday, called for genocide of the Jews.
“Our doctrine in fighting you [the Jews] is that we will totally exterminate you. We will not leave a single one of you alive, because you are alien usurpers of the land and eternal mercenaries,” said an unnamed imam, according to a transcript provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “Research the history, my brothers. Wherever the Jews lived, they spread corruption.
Oh Muslims, didn’t you notice that Allah said: ‘They spread in the land....’ The definite article in ‘the land’ means the entire land. ‘They spread in the land corruption, and Allah loves not the corrupters.’” Another Hamas representative, Osama Hamdan, a member of the Hamas political bureau based in Lebanon, told the country’s al-Quds TV on Monday: “We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians, in order to mix their blood in their holy matzot.”
“This is not a figment of imagination or something taken from a film. It is a fact, acknowledged by their own books and by historical evidence. It happened everywhere, here and there,” he said. “The Israelis concentrate on killing children. I believe that this is engraved in the historical Zionist and Jewish mentality, which has become addicted to the killing of women and children.”
Hamdan repeated the centuries-old false anti-Semitic blood libel that Jews murdered Christian children in order to use their blood for the Passover and other rituals.
Jerusalem Post staff and Reuters contributed to this report.