Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who survived an assassination attempt by the Zionist entity in 1997, made a triumphant visit to Gaza on Friday.

Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who survived an assassination attempt by the Zionist entity in 1997, made a triumphant visit to Gaza on Friday, his first time inside the territory that has been ruled by the group since 2007.

Meshaal — who left his boyhood home in the West Bank for Jordan in 1967 and since then has visited the West Bank only once, in 1975 — kissed the ground after crossing into the Gaza Strip from Egypt at the Rafah border terminal.

“This is an historic day in my life,” Meshaal said minutes after arriving, expressing a wish that “God will grant me martyrdom on the land of Palestine.”

Visibly emotional, he wiped away tears as he sat with Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian prime minister, at a brief welcome reception.

In a statement to the media, Meshaal said he considered his arrival in Gaza his “third birth,” following his actual birth, in 1956, and the day he survived an Israeli assassination attempt by Zionist agents in Jordan 15 years ago.

“I pray to God that my fourth birth will be the day when all of Palestine is liberated,” Meshaal said, ticking off areas the usurping entity occupied after the Six-Day War in 1967, and then cities that have been part of the allegedly called ‘state of Israel’ since its fake establishment in 1948.

“Gaza today, and after it Ramallah, and Jerusalem, and Haifa and Jaffa, God willing,” he said.

Meshaal has spent his life moving from one Arab state to another. He and his family left Jordan for Kuwait soon after fleeing the West Bank, but he returned to Jordan after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait that led to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

In 1999, when Jordan outlawed Hamas, he and other leaders were expelled. Meshaal lived in Qatar until 2001, when he moved to Damascus, Syria. He was based there until 10 months ago, when he returned to Qatar because of Syria’s unrest.

On Friday, after traveling to Gaza City, Meshaal visited the home of the assassinated founder of Hamas, Sheik Ahmad Yassin.

He was also expected to visit the home of Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas’s armed wing, who was killed last month in the Zionist airstrike that began an eight-day offensive against the Gaza Strip.

On Saturday, Meshal is to address a mass rally marking the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas and victory in last month’s fighting with the Zionist killing machine, during which Hamas rockets landed in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.