Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of waging a “full-scale war of genocide” in Gaza during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. He laid out a 12-point vision for managing the enclave post-war, but notably avoided any mention of Hamas, the terror group currently controlling Gaza.
The speech comes nearly a year into the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, which erupted after the militant group launched a deadly cross-border assault into southern Israel last year, killing over 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. Abbas, however, made no reference to Hamas’s role in instigating the conflict.
Abbas also addressed the growing clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, accusing Israel of committing “genocide” in Lebanon but once again refraining from naming the terror group explicitly. His address began with a defiant declaration, repeating three times, “We will not leave,” and asserting that “Palestine is our homeland… It will remain ours, and if anyone were to leave, it would be the occupying usurpers,” referring to Israel.
Abbas urged Israel to immediately halt its military campaign in Gaza and called on the international community to cease its support for the operation. He dismissed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that the IDF does not target civilians, pointedly asking, “Who is it then that killed more than 15,000 children?”
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry claims over 41,000 people have been killed or are presumed dead in the conflict, though this figure has not been independently verified and does not distinguish between civilians and fighters. Israeli defense officials, meanwhile, report that they have killed approximately 17,000 Hamas combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7th incursion.
* The Times of Israel contributed to this article.
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