Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh delivers a speech in Gaza City, on Jan. 23, 2018. The Islamic Hamas movement called on Tuesday for Palestinian national conference to discuss a new Palestinian strategy. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh stressed in a televised speech the need for a new strategy that addresses the U.S. and Israeli declaration aimed at striking the Palestinian issue. (Xinhua/Wissam Nassar)
GAZA, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Islamic Hamas movement called on Tuesday for Palestinian national conference to discuss a new Palestinian strategy.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh stressed in a televised speech the need for a new strategy that addresses the U.S. and Israeli declaration aimed at striking the Palestinian issue.
"We are ready to go to any capital to participate in such conference, especially in the Egyptian capital Cairo as the sponsor of the Palestinian reconciliation," Haniyeh added.
He said that the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's tour in Israel was "unwelcome," adding that his speech before the Knesset a day earlier "proves the United States has a strategic alliance with the Zionist entity."
The United States "doesn't take the interests and requirements of the Islamic and Arab nation into consideration," Haniyeh added.
He accused the U.S. administration of targeting "the principles of the Palestinian cause" by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and cutting funds to UNRWA, which was created in 1949 as a relief and human development agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
Haniyeh warned that "the situation in the Gaza Strip is very difficult."