The president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), Mahmoud Abbas, asked US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this Sunday for an “immediate” end to the “destructive war” between Israel and Israel.the Islamist group Hamas and to accelerate the entry of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
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“We find ourselves once again in extremely difficult circumstances. There are no words to describe the war of genocide and the destruction that our Palestinian people in Gaza are suffering at the hands of the Israeli war machine, without taking into account the norms of international law,” Abbas said, quoted by the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Abbas and Blinken met this Sunday in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, within the framework of the third visit of the head of American diplomacy to the region since the outbreak of the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel on October 7.
“How can you remain silent in the face of the death of 10,000 Palestinians, four thousand of them children“, and in the face of tens of thousands of injuries or the destruction of tens of thousands of homes, basic infrastructure, hospitals, shelters and water tanks?” Abbas asked.
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The ANP leader also pointed out that what is happening in the West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians have died since the outbreak of the war, and in Jerusalem, “is no less horrendous.” The meeting occurs after Blinken met yesterday in Amman with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, EgyptUnited Arab Emirates and the ANP and that last Friday he met in Tel Aviv with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Blinken was received at the ANP headquarters by Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and a close ally of Abbas. The visit to the de facto capital of the ANP, Blinken’s first since the start of the war, comes a day after Arab ministers pressured him for the United States to facilitate an “immediate cessation” of the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian enclave.
However, Blinken insisted on “Israel’s right to self-defense,” which his counterparts deemed “unacceptable” and “unjustifiable.” “The Arab countries ask for an immediate ceasefire and to stop this war and the murder of innocent civilians and the destruction it causes and we refuse to classify it as self-defense,” said Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al Safadi yesterday.
EFE
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