Deputy Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday once again praised the current terror wave against Israelis, which Hamas calls the “Al-Quds Intifada”, referring to it as “the greatest strategic development in the region” in recent years.

Speaking at a conference of religious leaders in Gaza, Haniyeh said the “intifada” has “changed the equations for anyone who believed that the time for the intifada was over, because the struggle and the intifada are not over and our people have the power to impose other equations.”

He added that the intifada succeeded in less than two months in pulling the rug from under the perception of coexistence and in “liberating” the Palestinians from thinking about everyday life so they can focus on the “real problem”, as he put it.

These achievements, Haniyeh claimed, are a result of the acts of Palestinians “who cling to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the child, the woman, the man, the boy and the girl who are fighting with their teeth, knives, cars and words”. He stressed that the intifada would continue until the ”liberation of Palestine” and added that another achievement of the intifada is that it toppled Israel’s deterrence capability.

Haniyeh recently released a call for all Palestinian Arabs to continue this “intifada”, saying in a speech that was recorded and played at a conference in Istanbul that “the knife of the intifada” defends the name of the Palestinian people and the Arab Islamic nation at its holy places, among them Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Hamas terror leader emphasized that the wave of terrorism will only escalate in force.

Hamas has continued to incite to terrorism against Israelis using both its educational institutions and official media outlets.