News- Middle East: The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has hailed the resilience and steadfastness of the residents of the Gaza Strip in the face of unrelenting Israeli strikes, describing the resistance as a sign of their commitment to the cause of liberating occupied Palestinian lands and the holy city of al-Quds.

The elite force, in a statement released on Saturday to commemorate the first martyrdom anniversary of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, warned that the architects of the ongoing genocide in Gaza have more overriding ambitions, rooted in the plunder of the world’s strategic and rich regions, particularly the Muslim world.

“The escalation of the Zionist regime's crimes in preventing the oppressed people of Gaza from accessing basic needs of life, such as water, food, and medicine, is a blatant violation of human rights and international law. In fact, it can be called a new genocide,” the statement noted.

The IRGC highlighted that such horrendous and inhuman crimes, which are being perpetrated in light of the silence and support of the self-proclaimed Western advocates of human rights, have made it inevitable for international institutions to respond to these medieval crimes, and have put them to their greatest litmus test in history.

The statement also praised the global wave of support for Palestinians and the growing condemnation of the occupying Israeli regime, describing the phenomenon as the product of the enlightening effect of the blood of the martyrs and the resilience of the oppressed people of Gaza.

The IRGC denounced the criminal assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran, stressing that the resistance front’s “hidden capacities” would guarantee victory for Gaza and the Palestinian nation, the defeat of the bogus Zionist regime, and the frustration of its sponsors.

Haniyeh, who was in the Iranian capital to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, was assassinated along with his bodyguard in an Israeli attack on his residence in northern Tehran early on July 31, 2024.

The IRGC underlined that Operation Al-Aqsa Storm was not simply an incident at a certain point in the history of Resistance, but rather was a school and an operational strategy that determines the fate of the battle against the Zionist regime.

The statement also condemned the recent fiendish moves and conspiracies to implement the so-called nation of two-state solution in Palestinian territories, echoing remarks by Haniyeh and the heroic catchphrase by Hamas that “we will never ever recognize Israel.”

The IRGC also strongly condemned the genocide in Gaza and the silence of international organizations and agencies in the face of the barbaric crimes of the Zionist regime, describing intentional starvation and the creation of famine as well-known examples of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Human rights institutions and international organizations must immediately lift the siege on Gaza, halt the ongoing genocide in the area through effective and coercive means, impose serious sanctions against the Zionist regime, try the perpetrators of these crimes at the International Criminal Court with initiatives similar to those introduced in the wake of the apartheid era in South Africa, the statement read.

The IRGC finally stated that Israeli officials must not be spared from paying the price for their criminality in normalizing hunger and depriving Gazans of their fundamental right to access food.

Source: Press TV