Jerusalem, Nov 5 (EFE).- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ramallah on Sunday and called for an “immediate” end to the “genocidal war” against Gaza by the Israeli military.
“We meet again under extremely difficult circumstances, and there are no words to describe the genocidal war and destruction that our Palestinian people in Gaza are enduring at the hands of the Israeli war machinery, with no regard for international law,” Abbas told Blinken, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency.
The news agency said Abbas asked Blinken to “immediately stop the devastating war” and expedite humanitarian aid, including medical care, food, water, electricity, and fuel, to the Gaza Strip, which has faced nearly a month of relentless Israeli bombing.
“How can we remain silent when ten thousand Palestinians, including four thousand children, have been killed, tens of thousands have been injured, and tens of thousands of homes, infrastructure, hospitals, shelters, and water reservoirs have been destroyed?” the president said.
He blamed Israel for the devastation in Gaza, insisting that military and security solutions cannot bring peace.
He called on Israel “to immediately stop these crimes.”
Abbas warned against the forced displacement of the Palestinian people from Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, emphasizing complete rejection of such a scenario.
He pointed out the “appalling situation in the West Bank and Jerusalem, where killings, assaults on land, people, and holy sites are taking place at the hands of Israeli occupation forces and extremist settlers.”
The Israelis “engage in ethnic cleansing, discrimination, and expropriation of Palestinian tax funds.”
He also pointed out that what was happening in the West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians have died since the outbreak of the war, and in Jerusalem “is no less horrendous.”
Abbas and Blinken spoke in Ramallah, the occupied West Bank.
The top US diplomat is on his third visit to the region since the outbreak of the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel on Oct. 7.
The meeting takes place after Blinken met yesterday in Amman with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and the PNA.
On Friday, he met in Tel Aviv with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Blinken’s visit, his first to the de facto PNA capital since the war began, comes a day after Arab ministers insisted on the United States facilitating an “immediate cessation” of the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian enclave.
However, Blinken insisted on “Israel’s right to self-defense,” which his counterparts considered “unacceptable” and “unjustifiable.”
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi said the civilian killings could not be justified as self-defense.
“I think we need to get our priorities straight. Right now, we have to make sure that this war stops,” al-Safadi said.
Blinken arrived in Israel on Friday on his third trip to the region since Israel and Hamas went to war on Oct. 7, when fighters of the Islamist group launched a massive attack on Israel, killing more than 1,400 and taking over 240 as hostages in Gaza.
Since then, the Israeli army has been pounding Gaza with missiles in a relentless military campaign that has killed more than 9,500 Palestinians, most of them being women and children. EFE
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