Ramallah, Nov 18 (EFE).- The president of the Palestine National Authority (PNA), Mahmoud Abbas, urged US President Joe Biden on Saturday to “intervene immediately” stop Israel’s “ongoing genocide” against Palestinians.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas looks on during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (not pictured) in the West Bank city of Ramallah, 05 November 2023. EFE-EPA FILE/ALAA BADARNEH / POOL
In a televised address reported by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, Abbas urged Biden, “who bears a special responsibility due to his international standing and significant influence on the Israeli occupation authorities, to intervene immediately to halt this aggression.”
“What our people are enduring in terms of killing and destruction surpasses human capacity. What is America waiting for in the face of the ongoing genocide against our people in Gaza? Isn’t the shedding of the blood of children, women, and the elderly enough to awaken the world’s conscience?” he asked.
Abbas, top leader of Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank but who was expelled from Gaza in 2007, also urged Biden to press for the entry of badly needed humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip.
“I also call on you to urgently intervene to stop the attacks by Israeli forces and the continuous terrorism by settlers against our people in the West Bank and Jerusalem, which foreshadow an imminent explosion,” he said.
Abbas stressed that the Palestinian people “deserve to live on their homeland with freedom and dignity” and that “they will remain steadfast on their land until they attain their legitimate rights to independence and statehood, with Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine.”
On Thursday, Israel’s National Security Minister, the far-right Itamar Ben Gvir, said the PNA, which governs small areas of the occupied West Bank, should be given the same treatment as Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“We need to deal with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which has similar views to Hamas, and whose leaders sympathized with the Hamas massacre, just as they deal with Gaza,” Ben Gvir wrote on X.
Abbas’ statement comes amid the bombings and ground operations carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip following an assault on Israeli territory by the Islamist group on Oct. 7. EFE
laa/tw
