News - Middle East: A high-ranking official of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement says the United States is the main obstacle to a Gaza ceasefire agreement as Washington exerts no pressure on the occupying Tel Aviv regime to accept a permanent truce in the territory.

“[Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu does not want a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip to be established. We checked with the fellow Hamas group whatever happened during the course of truce negotiations in Cairo. Our national position was the same as what Hamas declared in the Egyptian capital,” Islamic Jihad Deputy Secretary General Muhammad al-Hindi said on Monday evening.

He added that Netanyahu’s insistence on Israeli control and presence in the so-called Philadelphi Corridor – a narrow 14.5-kilometer-long (9-mile-long) stretch of land along Gaza's southern border with Egypt, is politically-motivated and has nothing to do with purported security concerns.

“Control of the Rafah border crossing is an internal Palestinian matter, and no party can dictate how it should be managed,” the senior Islamic Jihad official noted.

Hindi described the United States as the main obstacle to a Gaza ceasefire agreement, stressing it would be in the White House's best electoral interests that a ceasefire deal is struck in Gaza.

He also reiterated the need for free movement of Palestinians between the northern and southern sectors of the Gaza Strip.

“The Zionist enemy is backtracking on what it had previously agreed upon for partisan and political goals. The regime’s occupation of Gaza crossings enables its continued control over the movement and lives of Palestinians in the territory,” Hindi pointed out.

He underscored that Palestinian resistance fighters, through daily operations, are sapping the Israeli military’s strength and forcing the occupation forces to withdraw from Gaza.

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 last year after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a surprise retaliatory operation into the occupied territories.

Concomitantly with the war, the regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on the coastal territory, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.

So far during the military onslaught, the regime has killed at least 40,435 Gazans, most of them women, children, and adolescents. Another 93,534 Palestinians have sustained injuries as well.

Source: Press TV

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