President Abbas: ‘The displacement of our people from the Gaza Strip will be a second Nakba’

Citizens of Gaza are on their way to leave the city to the southern safer parts by whatever vehicles they can find with their belongings after the United Nations (UN) reported that the Israeli army wanted 1.1 million civilians in Gaza to leave their homes and move to the south of the region in Gaza City, Gaza on October 13, 2023. [Ashraf Amra – Anadolu Agency]

President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday stressed the need to immediately stop the Israeli attack against the Palestinian people, protect them and completely reject the displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

During talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he added: “This would constitute a second Nakba for our people.” Abbas also emphasised the urgent need for humanitarian corridors to be opened to the Gaza Strip, to allow the entry of medical supplies, water, electricity and fuel to citizens there.

President Abbas warned of a: “Humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip due to all humanitarian services in the Gaza Strip being cut off as well as the only power plant being shut down.”

He called for the need to stop the colonialists’ terrorism against the people in Palestinian cities, villages and camps in the West Bank and to stop the extremists from storming into the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque.

READ: Egypt warns against Israel call for Gaza residents to head south

President Abbas affirmed his rejection of practices related to killing or abusing civilians on both sides, calling for releasing civilians, prisoners and detainees.

The Palestinian president also asserted: “We stress the policy of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, which rejects violence and adheres to international legitimacy, peaceful popular resistance and political action as a path to achieving our national goals of freedom and independence.”

During the meeting, he urged that security and peace be achieved by giving the Palestinian people their legitimate rights and stated the need to resort to a political solution and implement the two-state solution based on international law, as well as freedom and independence for the Palestinians in their independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders.

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