Abbas: Gaza is integral part of Palestine
Hamas: Blinken tries to justify Israel’s genocide
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described the Gaza Strip as “an integral part of the Palestinian state” during a meeting with visiting US top diplomat Antony Blinken.
“It is not possible to accept or deal with the plans of the occupation authorities to separate it, or cut off any part of it,” the Palestinian leader told Blinken.
The Palestinian president also raised “efforts made to stop the Israeli aggression against Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” Wafa news agency reported. Blinken told Abbas that Washington supports “tangible steps” towards the creation of a Palestinian state.
Blinken reiterated Washington’s longstanding position that a Palestinian state must stand alongside Israel, “with both living in peace and security,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
The United States has dispatched its top diplomat to the region for the fourth time since the eruption of war on October 7. Blinken has so far visited several countries, including Turkey, the UAE and Jordan. The Wednesday meeting came a day after talks on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet.
As Blinken arrived under tight security at Abbas’s headquarters, a group of protesters held up signs that read “Stop the genocide,” “Free Palestine” and “Blinken out”.
Justifying genocide
The Hamas resistance movement in Gaza also denounced Blinken’s visit to the region, saying the US official’s “attempts to justify the genocide committed by the Israeli occupation army against Palestinian civilians … are miserable attempts to wash the hands of the criminal occupation of the blood of children, women and the elderly of Gaza”.
Israel intensified its onslaught on central and southern Gaza Strip with dozens killed in overnight attacks, including 15 from one family in Rafah city – an Israeli-declared “safe zone”.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said Wednesday at least 23,357 people have been killed in more than three months of Israel’s strikes on the Palestinian territory.
The toll includes 147 deaths in 24 hours, a ministry statement said, while 59,410 people have been wounded across the Palestinian territory since conflict erupted on October 7.
Attacks on Israeli
soldiers
Meanwhile, the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza, said its fighters targeted Israeli military troops with a barrage of mortar shells around Al-Mahatta area in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Mortar shells were also used to hit Israeli soldiers and vehicles in the southern Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City, it said.
Israel’s military said on Tuesday that Palestinian fighters ambushed Israeli troops in a dense Gaza City neighborhood, killing at least nine of them. At least 187 Israeli soldiers have been killed so far.
The conflict in Gaza has now spread to other parts of the region where resistance movements have been targeting Israel’s position in support of Palestinians. In the north of occupied Palestine clashes have intensified between Israeli army and Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah. The Israeli army has so far killed dozens of resistance’s fighters in its attacks on Lebanon, including senior commanders of the resistance groups.
Extrajudicial killings
On Tuesday, UN experts in international law condemned the killing of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri and other fighters in drone strikes on Lebanon, saying this amounted to the crimes of extrajudicial killings and murder.
“Killings in foreign territory are arbitrary when they are not authorized under international law,” the two UN Special Rapporteurs, Ben Saul and Morris Tidball-Binz, said in a statement issued in Geneva.
“Israel was not exercising self-defense because it presented no evidence that the victims were committing an armed attack on Israel from Lebanese territory.”
Arouri was killed last week by a drone in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the stronghold of Hezbollah, in an attack widely attributed to Israel. Israeli forces also killed Wissam Tawil, a top Hezbollah commander, in a strike in south Lebanon on Monday, sources familiar with the resistance group’s operations said.
Hezbollah retaliated on Tuesday, hitting Israeli army headquarters in Safed, northern Israel, with drones.