Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas called Thursday on the international community to stop sending weapons to Israel in order to halt bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza, singling out the United States.
Abbas said that Washington continued to provide diplomatic cover and weapons to Israel for its war in Gaza despite the mounting death toll there, now at 41,534 according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run strip.
Mahmoud Abbas used the rostrum of the UN General Assembly as he typically does — to criticise Israel. But this was the first time he did so since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israel that triggered an Israeli military operation that has devastated the Gaza Strip.
Abbas strode to the podium to loud applause and a few unintelligible shouts. His first words were a sentence repeated three times: “We will not leave. We will not leave. We will not leave.”
“Stop this crime. Stop it now. Stop killing children and women. Stop the genocide. Stop sending weapons to Israel. This madness cannot continue. The entire world is responsible for what is happening to our people in Gaza and the West Bank,” Abbas said in an address to the UN General Assembly.
The vast majority of the besieged Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, with many seeking shelter in school buildings.
“The US alone stood and said: ‘No, the fighting is going to continue.’ It did this by using the veto,” he said, referring to the veto repeatedly wielded to thwart censure in the UN Security Council of Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
“It furnished Israel with the deadly weapons that it used to kill thousands of innocent civilians, children and women.
“This further encouraged Israel to continue aggression,” he added, saying that Israel “does not deserve” to be in the UN.
Washington is Israel’s closest ally and backer, supplying the nation with billions of dollars of aid and military material.
Attacks Israel’s UN membership
The speech by Abbas comes months after the General Assembly voted that the State of Palestine merited full membership.
As world leaders opened their speeches Tuesday, Abbas was able to take his seat alongside the Palestinian delegation, seated in the General Assembly in alphabetical position.
In his address, Abbas said Israel’s defiance of the United Nations, which it often calls biased, showed the country should not be part of the world body.
“Israel, which refuses to implement United Nations resolutions, does not deserve to be a member in this international organization,” Abbas said.
Israel, whose right-wing government has sought to isolate the Palestinian Authority, swiftly attacked Abbas’s speech and faulted him for not condemning Hamas.
“Only when he stands on the UN platform does he talk about a peaceful solution. There is no greater hypocrisy and lie than this,” said Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.
“Abbas’s legacy is one of chronic weakness in the face of terrorism and hatred.”
The October 7 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.
Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 97 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 33 who the Israeli military says are dead.
(with inputs from AFP and AP)
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