ISTANBUL, Sept 15: A senior Hamas official told AFP on Sunday that the Palestinian Islamist movement had ample resources to continue fighting Israel despite losses sustained over more than 11 months of war in Gaza.
"The resistance has a high ability to continue," Osama Hamdan told AFP during an interview in Istanbul.
"There were martyrs and there were sacrifices... but in return there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance."
His comments came less than a week after Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told journalists that Hamas, whose October 7 attack triggered the war, "no longer exists" as a military formation in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched retaliatory military operations to destroy Hamas after the group's surprise attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures. The Israeli military campaign has killed at least 41,206 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which does not provide breakdowns of civilian and militant deaths.
Militants also seized 251 hostages on October 7, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead. Netanyahu is facing mounting domestic pressure to seal a deal in which hostages would be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Israel's announcement this month that the bodies of six hostages had been recovered from a tunnel in Gaza after they were "executed' by Hamas spurred an outpouring of grief and anger, leading to a brief general strike and large-scale demonstrations that continued in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Saturday night.
But months of negotiations aimed at securing a truce -- mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar -- have apparently stalled.
In the interview on Sunday, Hamdan said the United States, Israel's most important military backer, was not doing enough to force concessions from Netanyahu that would end the bloodshed.
"The American administration does not exert sufficient or appropriate pressure on the Israeli side," Hamdan said.
"Rather it is trying to justify the Israeli side's evasion of any commitment."
During two press conferences after officials announced the deaths of the six hostages earlier this month, Netanyahu said it was Hamas who refused to compromise and vowed "not to give in to pressure" on remaining sticking points.
He also said Israel's military campaign had killed "no less than 17,000" Hamas militants. —AFP