Jerusalem – Convoys paraded signs of the organizations military prowess through the streets of the coastal territory in a military rally in Gaza on Sunday, held by Hamas.
The military parade, which featured long range missiles mounted on trucks and Kassam Brigade fighters and naval commandos brandishing weapons, marked 27 years since the founding of Hamas.
The parade also featured Hamas members burning an effigy of a Jew and the Temple. In addition, they carried around coffins with photos of the murdered Rabbis in the Har Nof attack.
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At the parade, a senior Hamas leader reaffirmed the Islamist movement’s founding charter’s pledge to destroy Israel.
“This illusion called Israel will be removed. It will be removed at the hands of the Qassam Brigades,” said Khalil al-Hayya, a top Hamas leader, referring to the movement’s armed wing.
Abu Ubaida, the brigades’ spokesman, said another confrontation with Israel might be inevitable unless tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed in the Gaza Strip in last summer’s conflict are rebuilt soon.
“We will accept no less than the rebuilding of everything that was destroyed by the savage Zionist aggression,” said the masked spokesman, whose group is shunned by the West as a terrorist organization.
Addressing a crowd of several thousand in the rain, Abu Abaida praised Iran for supplying Hamas with money and weapons. Relations with Tehran have been strained by Hamas’s hostility toward Iran’s closest regional ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.