Hamas Spokesman: A Truce Means Preparing for the Next Battle (VIDEO)

Mushir Al Masri, a Hamas MP and media spokesman, being interviewed by media in front of backdrop showing a destroyed house, and being filmed inside the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza. The photo was posted on Twitter by WSJ correspondent Nick Casey, and has since been removed. Photo: Screenshot.

Mushir Al Masri, a Hamas MP and media spokesman, told an Arabic-language television interviewer that Hamas has no intention of reaching a long-term truce or a peace agreement with Israel, and would use any lull in fighting to re-arm its troops.

Hamas rejected an early ceasefire proposal from Egypt and its leader Khaled Mashaal, exiled in Doha, has reportedly also nixed a proposal put forward by the Qatari regime, which backs the militant group financially.

Al Masri was asked in the television interview if Hamas had its own ceasefire proposal. He responded, “This is just nonsense of the Zionists and a dream of them to live in peace and calmness for 10 years.”

“We shall keep disturbing the Zionists until the last of them Zionists leaves our Palestine land because every truce is temporary for a certain period of time,” Al Masri said. “We are not talking about a long term truce. We are not talking about a peace agreement.”

“‘A truce’ in the dictionary of the resistance means preparing for the next battle,” he said. “Our resistance will keep on developing, producing and filling its arsenals and in the production of surprising elements for the next battles until the Zionist enemy leaves our land, with the help of Allah.”

The interview corresponded to an internal Hamas memo revealed last week about how Hamas instructs spokesmen and supporters on social media to phrase its fight in Gaza in one way for international news outlets and another for the Arabic press.

The video clip was flagged on Thursday by blogger Elder of Ziyon, on whose page one commenter noted that the spokesman’s name, Mushir Al Masri, meant, Mushir the Egyptian, who, like many Hamas leaders, actually was not native to Palestine.

Al Masri was photographed last week being interviewed on camera, in front of a backdrop showing a destroyed house, but inside of Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital, where Hamas has established its headquarters, in violation of international rules of war.

The photo of Al Masri was posted on Twitter by The Wall Street Journal correspondent Nick Casey, and has since been removed.

There have been reports of many journalists taking down posts from social media to avoid pressure from the Hamas spokesmen or endure the hateful responses by supporters of Gaza’s war against Israel. The Financial Times’s Jerusalem correspondent John Reedwas targeted on Wednesday for noting on Twitter that Hamas was firing from a rocket launch site adjacent to the same hospital, even as the wounded were being brought in for treatment. Reed, a veteran reporter for the FT in Poland and South Africa, let his post stand.

Watch Hamas spokesman Mushir Al Masri tell Arabic-language media his thoughts on a ceasefire.