Actions of Hamas ‘do not represent Palestinians’: Abbas
The comments follow a meeting last Friday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was to return on Monday to Israel after talks in six Arab states.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the policies and actions of Hamas “do not represent the Palestinian people” as more than a million Gazans fled the Israeli bombardment.
The comments from Mr Abbas follow a meeting last Friday in Amman with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was to return on Monday to Israel after talks in six Arab states, hoping to co-ordinate efforts against Hamas while finding ways to alleviate Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.
“I want an opportunity to share everything that I’ve heard – that I’ve learned – over the last few days visiting with our other partners and to talk about the way forward with our Israeli allies and friends,” Mr Blinken said in Cairo.
The trip comes as Joe Biden reportedly considers an invitation to visit Israel to demonstrate further what the US President has described as unwavering solidarity.
Israel has declared war on Hamas after Hamas fighters on October 7 broke through the heavily fortified border and shot, stabbed and burned to death more than 1400 people, most of them civilians. Israel has responded with relentless bombing, killing at least 2670 people, the majority ordinary Palestinians, in the blockaded and impoverished Gaza Strip.
On Sunday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Israel’s response had “gone beyond the scope of self-defence” and demanded that it “cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza”.
“The root cause ... of the Palestine-Israel situation is that the Palestinian people’s right to statehood has been set aside for a long time,” Mr Wang said in a call with Iran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
China, which has close ties with Iran, has increasingly positioned itself as a mediator in the Middle East, but has been criticised by Western officials for not specifically naming Hamas in its condemnations of violence in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Under US pressure, Israel on Sunday resumed the supply of water to the southern Gaza Strip after earlier vowing to keep out all supply of food, water and energy to the densely populated territory.
Israel’s army has told people in the north of the strip – nearly half of its 2.4-million population – to head south to safety, ahead of an expected ground offensive.
Aid groups have warned of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, with some one million people displaced and Palestinians complaining of water running out
Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz on Sunday said water supplies to southern Gaza had been switched back.
However, power outages threaten to cripple life-support systems, from sea water desalination plants to food refrigeration and hospital incubators.
Everyday functions, from going to the toilet to showering and washing clothes, are almost impossible, locals said.
Gazans are effectively trapped, with Israeli-controlled crossings closed and Egypt having shut the Rafah border in the south.
Mr Blinken was confident the crossing “will be open” for aid into the Strip, amid reports that Egypt was blocking the passage of Gazans with foreign passports until relief supplies were allowed in.
The US named a co-ordinator to spearhead humanitarian relief into Gaza, retired ambassador David Satterfield, who was expected to arrive in Israel on Monday.
The Biden administration has said Israel had a right to respond and had stopped short of calling for restraint or a ceasefire but it had also warned against more extreme measures such as mass expulsion of Palestinians, a prospect feared by Mr Abbas.
In comments during talks with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and reported by Palestinian news agency Wafa, Mr Abbas said the Palestinian Liberation Organisation was the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
Mr Biden, in an interview aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes, cautioned of dangers in any bid by Israel to reoccupy Gaza. “I think it would be a mistake,” he said.
Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005. Two years later, Israel imposed an air, land and sea blockade of the territory after it came under the control of Hamas, considered a terrorist group by the US, Israel and Australia.
Mr Blinken held talks in four of the five Arab states with diplomatic relations with Israel – Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. He also visited Saudi Arabia, which put its own normalisation bid with Israel on hold after the violence, and Qatar, a US partner that maintains relations with Hamas.
AFP