31 August 2002

In the name of Allah the most Gracious the most Merciful

“Faint not nor grieve, for ye, will overcome them if ye are (indeed) believers”

 Aggression will not break our people’s determination and Jihad

Our patient people in Palestine:

Our Arab and Muslim masses:

A new crime is added to the inflated record of terrorism and aggression against our people and Ummah. A new aggression against one of our people’s leaders and a symbol of our people’s steadfastness, patience and sacrifice. A new page of Zionist criminality and terrorism that affirms the enemy’s unabated efforts to break our people’s determination. Some have tried to picture that enemy as one seeking peace but it soon committed fresh crimes and aggression exposing that deception and revealing the ugly image of this usurping entity.

We in the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, know that the road of Jihad and resistance is one of sacrifice. We shoulder the burden of resistance alongside our people and their struggling and Jihad forces and we affirm that arresting the Mujahid Sheikh Hassan Yousef, who is well known to our people as one of the renowned political leaders, would not weaken us but rather would assert our insistence on our chosen path. Furthermore, the enemy’s new massacre in Tobas today will only boost our people’s insistence on Jihad as the only option to regain rights, liberate lands and restore Al-Quds and holy shrines.

In the light of that enemy’s repeated crimes, we call on the Palestinian Authority to end all contacts with the enemy and rescind all agreements that stipulate protecting the enemy’s security and its war machine that is targeting our people. We urge the PA to side by the Palestinian people’s option and will since the enemy did not stop its terrorism and aggression and tyranny despite the concessions and submission to dictates.

Our Mujahid patient people :

In face of that enemy we have to remain patient and to trust in Allah. We are in pains for what is happening to our leaders and Mujahideen but the enemy is also hurt thanks to heroism of our Mujahideen. We still hope in Allah’s Victory and Support. “If ye are suffering hardships, they are suffering similar hardships; but ye have hope from Allah, while they have none.”

And it is a Jihad until either victory or martyrdom

The Islamic Resistance Movement
Hamas – Palestine
Saturday 23^rd Jumada Thani 1423H
31^st August 2002AD