Hamas vows continued Anti-Israel protest until goals achieved

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said on Monday that the current anti-Israel mass protest will continue until its goals are achieved, China's Xinhua news agency reported.

"Greetings to the heroes who made the confrontation as extension to the popular uprising (Intifada) that broke out on this blessed land for freedom and return to all the land of Palestine," he said in Gaza City, just a few hundred metres from the border security fence between Gaza and Israel.

March 30, the Palestinian Land Day, was the start of a six-week anti-Israel protest. It will climax on May 15, the day after the 70th anniversary of Israel's declaration of independence which the Palestinians call Nakba Day, or "The Day of Catastrophe."

"We will return to Palestine and our villages and will return to Jerusalem and will bring our people from all areas of refuge and diaspora to this blessed land," he told a crowd.

Thirty-two Palestinians, including a journalist and two children, have been killed and 2,850 others injured since March 30, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

The mass protest known as the "Great March of Return," demands that Palestinian refugees get the right to return to their villages occupied by Israel.