News - Middle East: Hamas says a plan by extremist Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich to outrageously expand the Israeli occupation in the West Bank reflects the regime’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s so-called “Greater Israel” scheme.

Mahmoud Mardawi, one of the Palestinian resistance movement’s senior leaders, made the remarks to the Al Jazeera television network on Friday.

“Smotrich expresses the regime's position, but Netanyahu, from a diplomatic standpoint, tries to hide behind this position of Smotrich,” he said.

Mardawi’s remarks came after the Israeli minister reaffirmed steadfast commitment to a plan for construction of over 3,000 illegal settler units in the West Bank. Smotrich also said the plan would effectively "bury" the prospect of a Palestinian state.

Days earlier, Netanyahu had unveiled his aspirations for realization of the "Greater Israel" scheme, in line with which, the regime would try to extend its occupation of the West Bank over independent nations, including Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

“This regime, with its identity and policies, must be confronted based on what it believes in, which is a blatant aggression against Palestinians in the first place,” the resistance official said.

Those policies were embodied in the regime’s October 2023-present war of genocide on the Gaza Strip, which has so far claimed the lives of nearly 61,900 Palestinians, mostly women and children, he added.

According to Mardawi, the regime was practically seeking to kill “all living beings in Gaza” through its atrocities.

The Palestinian official added that the resistance had known from long ago about the regime’s harboring expansionist plots, which he said were deeply rooted in the “Zionist political expansionist thought.”

The official urged the Arab League’s member states to respond to such schemes proportionately by severing ties with the Zionist entity and withdrawing their ambassadors from the occupied Palestinian territories.

He said, although, some Arab states had condemned the scheme, they were yet to take action by imposing sanctions on the regime.

The official also categorically ruled out the prospect of the resistance’s laying down its arms, asking, “What is the value of the resistance laying down its arms while the enemy wreaks havoc?”

Source: Press TV