Satterfield: Hamas's humanitarian policy? it has none
US Special Envoy David Satterfield asserted Hamas's responsibility for the suffering in Gaza, attributing it to their use of civilians as shields and rejection of peaceful solutions.
Hamas is fundamentally responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, US Special Envoy David Satterfield told reporters on Tuesday, as he dismissed a question about Hamas's humanitarian policy compared to that of Israel.
"Hamas's humanitarian policy is the opposite of humanitarian. It is to use innocent civilians as shields, as presumed protection for their own facilities, for their own terrorist military forces," he said, as he appeared startled by the comparison.
“The fundamental actor responsible for the suffering here is a terrorist group — Hamas,” explained Satterfield, who is specifically tasked with humanitarian issues relating to Gaza.
“The fighting in Gaza, the suffering of the Palestinian people could end tonight, if Hamas chose to accept the deal for the release of hostages in the establishment of a cease-fire. And that ceasefire could with further releases be sustained.
Satterfield said that as someone who has been working for 40 years on Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli issues, it was clear to him that Hamas could have chosen to accept the principles of peace first laid under the Oslo Accords and then by the Quartet.
Hamas favors violence
“Hamas for its own ideological and political reasons” has favored violence as a method to pursue its own ambitions, he said.
“The greatest victims of this had been Palestinians themselves, not just the Israelis who were massacred on October 7 in that paroxysms of bestial violence. Hamas still has a choice,” he said.
“Hamas has spent 17 years in expending every resource provided for the people of Gaza for its own purposes in constructing a network of military facilities, tunnels, embedded in, under [and] around humanitarian facilities as a deliberate act of preservation and advancement of their interests.
“Hamas has sacrificed thousands of innocent Gazans,” Satterfield said, adding that it “first and foremost victimizes Palestinians and their future,” which is why they are considered to be a terror organization.
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