Yasser El-Bana, IOL Palestine Correspondent

GAZA CITY, January 14 (IslamOnline) – Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi, a prominent figure of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, on Tuesday, January 14, appealed to Palestinian children to refrain from attacking Jewish settlement.

In exclusive statements to IslamOnline, Rantisi said this would help prevent Israel from exploiting such attacks to tarnish the image of the Palestinian resistance on the grounds of sending children to be killed.

"Psychiatrists believe that children seek to model themselves after Palestinians who carried out martyr operations," Rantisi said.

The Hamas official warned that Israeli agents are encouraging Palestinian children to infiltrate into Jewish settlements so that they will be an easy catch for the Israeli occupation troops.

Rantisi underscored that Israel wanted to tarnish the image of Hamas even in the eyes of Palestinians, asserting that Palestinians "must do everything in their power to figure out whether those standing behind such a phenomenon have been recruited by the enemy or not."

He said that there is no evidence that some Palestinian factions were sending those children, underling that Israel wanted to make the Palestinian people treat Hamas as an outcast from the Palestinian society.

"Palestinian children who attempted to attacked Jewish settlements were armed with nothing but knives. And it is not logical that Hamas wants to see those children slain for the fun of it."

The Hamas official added that the Israeli occupation forces want to justify their killing of the Palestinian children in cold blood, noting that the death toll of Palestinian children since the start of Al-Aqsa Intifada, which entered its third year, had risen to up to 600 children.

"We are fully aware of your noble goals and that you are determined to avenge your colleagues who had been brutally slain at the hands of the Israeli troops," Rantisi passionately told Palestinian children.

"But do not be in a rush and do not run out of patience. Spare your precious blood for the days to come, when you become much older," he said.