Hamas denies negotiating with Saudis on detainees held in Riyadh

The Islamic Hamas movement on Monday denied conducting any negotiations with Saudi Arabia over its detainees who have been in Saudi jails since 2019. 

On Sunday, Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen television channel reported that sources close to Hamas said the movement had contacted Saudi Arabia to negotiate the release of Palestinian detainees in Saudi jails, but "it was shocked" by the Saudi demands to return their relations with the Islamist group if it accepts the conditions of the UN Quartet on Palestine. 

The International Quartet, which includes the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia, was formed in 2002 to ensure the so-called "resumption of the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis."

Speaking to The New Arab, Hazem Qassem, spokesperson of the Islamist group, said that "the report is fabricated and baseless."

"Hamas believes that it gets its power in resisting the Israeli occupation from the Arab and Islamic depth," he added, further pointing out that his movement establishes its relations with the Islamic and Arab countries based on mutual respect. 

"We (Palestinians) have our main issue of liberating our lands from the Israeli occupation by all means in a bid to establish our state of Palestine on our lands," he said.  

The spokesperson called on the Al-Mayadeen's administration "to report accurately and truthfully stories and not to rely on untrusted sources that aim to defame the Palestinian struggle and resistance, mainly the Hamas movement". 

In 2019, Saudi authorities detained about 68 Palestinians and Jordanians living in the kingdom, accusing them of providing support to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Among the detainees is 83-year-old Mohammed Al-Khudari, previously Hamas' representative to Saudi Arabia.

Suffering from cancer when arrested, al-Khudari lost the ability to move his right hand while in detention due to inadequate healthcare.

In December, Saudi Arabia reduced Al-Khudari's sentence from 15 years to three. Meanwhile, other detainees have been tortured, according to activists.

Since then, Saudi-Hamas relations have deteriorated as Saudi King Emir Mohammed Bin Salman presented his gift to the former US President Donald Trump by squashing the existence of the Palestinian Islamist group in Saudi Arabia, a source close to Hamas who requested anonymity, said to The New Arab. 

"For long years, dozens of Palestinian businessmen and academians had contributed to developing the economic situation of their families by transferring money to them as they work in Saudi Arabia," the source said. 

"All the Saudi Arabia-based Palestinians follow the legal ways to transfer the money to their families or even the poor families in Gaza," the source added. "Why the Saudi authorities did not prevent them before 2019?"

Since 2007, Gazans have been suffering from the tightened Israeli blockade that deteriorated the situation in the coastal enclave, which led the locals to depend on the financial aid provided by international and private institutions. 

About 83 per cent of the Gaza population lives below the poverty line, while the average daily income per capita is US$2, according to the People's Committee to Confront the Siege on Gaza, considered the worst in the world.

The Gaza-based family of Mohammed al-Shafei was among thousands of families receiving financial aid for years from Palestinians who live abroad, which kept his family afloat. 

"For more than ten years, I received about $US400 monthly from a Palestinian businessman in Saudi Arabia (...), but I have not heard from him since 2019," the 54-year-old amputee told The New Arab. 

"Based on the financial aid that I received, I was able to pay the expenses of my eight-member family," he said. "However, now I wait for aid provided by UNRWA."  

The amputee condemned Saudi's decision to detain the Palestinians under the pretext that they support Hamas, stressing that "none of the Arab countries cares about the poor people in Gaza."