Abbas: Palestinians will not give up any rights
RAMALLAH - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that the Israeli government’s failure to recognise the Palestinian people’s rights will not bring security and stability to anyone.
Abbas made the remarks in a speech marking the 74 th anniversary of the Palestinians’ Nakba Day, literally meaning catastrophe day, official PalestinianNews Agency (WAFA) reported.
He called on Israel’s leaders to “leave the cycle of the denial of the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people, recognised in international law and the UN resolutions.” The Palestinians “will not give up any of their rights, especially their right to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital,” the Palestinian president noted. He also called for affirming the Palestinians’ right of return, and to a just solution to the Palestinian refugee issue in accordance with UN Resolution 194 and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.
The national unity of the Palestinian people “is the strongest response to the Nakba, occupation, and injustice to which the Palestinian people are subjected,” Abbas concluded. Every year on 15 May, the Palestinians mark the Nakba Day, the day after Israel declared its independence in 1948. The leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Gaza Strip Yahya Sinwar told a press on Saturday that he did not “take recent Israeli assassination threats into account.”
While offering condolences for Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen
Abu Akleh killed by Israeli soldiers on Wednesday, Sinwar called on the international community “to hold Israel accountable for its crimes,” and said he was ready to show up directly on television.
It was the first appearance of Sinwar, 59, after Israel threatened to assassinate him following an attack carried out in Elad, east of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, which killed three Israelis and wounded four others on 5 May.
Israeli media quoted Israeli political and security sources as saying that Israel considers Sinwar “a mastermind of terrorist acts, and considers itself free to work in the Gaza Strip to curb terrorism,” but the army opposed the decision to assassinate Sinwar as Israeli army leaders believed the time was not ripe to implement such a decision.
Sinwar, a former detainee who spent more than 20 years in Israeli prisons and was released under a prisoner exchange deal in 2011, has been the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip since 2017.