Hamas on Monday thanked the U.N. Security Council for passing a resolution demanding a temporary halt to the Israel Defense Forces operation against the terror group in the Gaza Strip.
“Hamas calls on the Security Council to pressure the occupation [Israel, sic] to adhere to the ceasefire and stop the war of genocide and ethnic cleansing against our people,” it said in a statement posted online.
The statement added that a truce is needed to “bury our martyrs who have remained under the rubble” and for “humanitarian needs.”
The U.N. resolution, which calls for a halt to the fighting until the end of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan on April 9, was supported by 14 nations, including veto holders China, Russia, the United Kingdom and France. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield abstained, allowing the measure to pass.
The text also demands the “immediate and unconditional release” of the 134 remaining hostages hostages taken during Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror rampage across Israel’s northwestern Negev.
Hamas said it is willing “to engage in an immediate prisoner exchange process that leads to the release of prisoners on both sides.”
The terror group expressed its hope for “a permanent ceasefire that leads to the withdrawal of all Zionist forces from the Gaza Strip and the return of the displaced [Palestinians] to the homes from which they left.”
Hamas openly seeks to destroy Israel in its entirety and replace it with a Palestinian-Islamic state. Article 13 of its charter states that “there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.”
The 1988 charter also states that “our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” It quotes Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, as saying: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 men, women and children—and wounded thousands more—in a mass attack after infiltrating Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, when they also abducted more than 250 others and brought them back into captivity in Gaza.
