Palestine’s Abbas speaking at UNGA now, decries Gaza ‘genocide’
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is speaking via a videolink, as the Trump administration denied him and his delegation visas.
“I speak to you today after almost two years in which our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip have been facing a war of genocide, destruction, starvation and displacement,” Abbas said.
That genocide has been “waged by the Israeli occupation forces in which they killed and injured more than 220,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are unarmed, children, women and the elderly,” he added.
Hamas will have ‘no role’ in future governance: Abbas
Mahmoud Abbas, addressing the UNGA via a videolink, says despite two years of suffering in Gaza, “we reject” Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023.
“Despite all that our people have suffered, we reject what Hamas carried out on the seventh of October,” Abbas asserted. Moreover, the Palestinian leader said that “Hamas will not have a role to play in governance”, and the group and other factions must hand over their weapons.
Abbas condemns ‘decades’ of Israeli occupation, lack of ‘accountability’
Palestinian Authority president says people in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip continue to endure decades of “tragedies” under “Israeli aggression and occupation”.
“Years that our people have spent under occupation, killing, arrests and settlement and the theft of money, property and lands, and this still continues without any deterrent or accountability,” Mahmoud Abbas added.
“More than a thousand resolutions at the United Nations – not one of them was implemented.”
Palestinians absent as ‘active diplomacy’ ongoing at UNGA
What was in the Mahmoud Abbas speech was not actually new. What is interesting is he is not here. What is really interesting is there is active diplomacy going on here, and Palestine is not present for that either.
We had a meeting of Arab and Islamic leaders with President Trump on Tuesday. We’re told an important new proposal, a 21-point new peace plan, was put forward by Trump. That’s according to his special envoy, Steve Witkoff.
We know few details about what’s in that. One detail I think we have gleaned is a promise from the Trump administration to stop Prime Minister Netanyahu from a full annexation, taking full legal control of the occupied West Bank.
That apparently is stopped in this proposal. But it is a plan that has been negotiated without the Palestinian Authority.
