Hamas vows Palestinians to continue fight until expulsion of occupying Israelis

The Gaza Strip-based movement made the remarks in a statement on Wednesday on the 17th anniversary of the apartheid regime's expulsion from the coastal sliver.

The statement underscored the legitimacy of Palestinians’ resistance against Israeli atrocities, saying they would continue their anti-occupation efforts "until they take back their rights and drive the occupiers out of their ancestral land."

The Israeli regime occupied the enclave and the nearby Palestinian territory of the West Bank during a heavily-Western-backed war in 1967.

The regime withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005, but has been keeping the territory under an all-out land, aerial, and naval blockade that has turned it into the world's largest open-air prison.

Back in June, a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) brought to the fore the monumental toll that the blockade was taking on the strip of land’s population.

About 2.1 million Palestinians in the besieged strip are “locked in,” with a vast majority unable to access the remainder of the occupied Palestinian territories and the outside world, the report said. “In previous years, patients have died while awaiting a response to their application,” it added
Hamas condemned Tel Aviv over its cruel siege and stressed that the Palestinian nation would not remain silent on the continued blockade.