News - Middle East: The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has hailed an earlier United Nations General Assembly resolution that mandated the Israeli regime to end its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.

“We consider this vote to be an expression of genuine international will supporting our people and their legitimate rights,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday.

It considered the foremost of those rights to be “the right to self-determination and the establishment of an independent [Palestinian] state with [the holy occupied city of] al-Quds as its capital.”

The resolution “is a significant victory for our people and highlights the level of isolation faced by the terrorist Zionist entity,” the movement added.

The assembly voted 124 against 14 in favor of the resolution earlier in the day. The United States, the regime’s biggest supporter, was among those casting a negative vote.

The resolution welcomed a July advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice that said the occupation and the regime’s settlements were illegal and had to be withdrawn.

The Israeli regime claimed existence in 1948 after occupying huge swathes of regional territories during a Western-backed war.

It occupied more land, namely the West Bank, including East al-Quds, and the Gaza Strip, in another such war in 1967.

Ever since, it has built hundreds of settlements in the West Bank and deployed the most aggressive restrictions on the movements of Palestinians there.

Tel Aviv withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but has been keeping the coastal territory under an all-out land, aerial, and naval siege since a year after it left the territory.

The regime has also subjected Gaza to several wars, the most recent among which is still raging on since commencement last October.

Concluding its statement, Hamas called on the countries that voted in favor of the resolution “to take further steps and decisions that will isolate the fascist occupation entity and pressure it to halt its genocidal war against our people.”

At least 41,272 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 95,551 others wounded in the brutal military onslaught so far.

Source: Press TV