‘Stop the genocide. Stop sending weapons to Israel’: Palestinian president

LONDON: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday urged the international community to stop sending weapons to Israel in order to end the war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank.

“Stop this crime. Stop it now. Stop killing children and women. Stop the genocide. Stop sending weapons to Israel,” he told the UN General Assembly.

“This madness can’t continue. The entire world is responsible for what’s happening to our people in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Abbas’s comments come after the Health Ministry in Gaza on Thursday said at least 41,534 people have been killed in the war, now in its 12th month.

He said the Israeli government took advantage of the Hamas attack last October to launch an all-out genocide against Gaza. 

“It committed and continues to commit war crimes, as acknowledged by the international community,” Abbas added. 

He said Israel is now launching “a new aggression on the Lebanese people,” who are being “subjected to a war of genocide.”

He added: “Israel must stop the war in Lebanon and in Palestine. We condemn this aggression, and we demand that it stops immediately.

“Israel has reoccupied the Gaza Strip in its entirety … Seventy-five percent of everything in Gaza has been fully destroyed.” 

More than 600 people have been killed since Monday in Israeli strikes on Lebanon, which follow nearly a year of cross-border fire with Hezbollah in parallel with the Gaza war.

Abbas called on the international community to impose sanctions on Israel, and said the country does not deserve to be a UN member. 

“The international community must immediately impose sanctions on Israel. The massacres, the crimes, the genocide that Israel has been perpetrating against our people since its inception in 1948 to this very day won’t go unpunished,” he said.

“Israel, which refuses to implement UN resolutions, doesn’t deserve to be a member in this international organization.”

Abbas called for a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the delivery of humanitarian aid throughout Gaza, and a full Israeli withdrawal from the territory. 

“We refuse the establishment of buffer zones or taking any part from Gaza,” he said. “We won’t allow a single centimeter of Gaza to be taken.

“The State of Palestine must shoulder its responsibilities in the Gaza Strip and impose its full mandate on it and jurisdiction on it, including the border checkpoints, especially the Rafah international border.”

He said the Palestinian Authority should have control over all Palestinian territories, and it would hold elections once the war is over. Hamas has governed Gaza since 2007.

Abbas concluded by saying: “Palestine will be free. It will be free, despite anyone who objects to that. Our people will live on the land of their fathers and grandfathers, as they’ve done for more than 6,000 years. They’ll continue their legitimate struggle for independence. The occupation will end.”