Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, has decried Israel’s “war of genocide” and settlement expansion, while condemning Hamas and saying the armed group would hand over its weapons in any postwar settlement in a closely watched speech to the United Nations.
Abbas addressed the gathering by video conference after his visa was revoked by the United States ahead of the 80th session of the United Nations general assembly.
Reinforcing the global schism over Israel’s war in Gaza, UN member states voted 145-5 to allow Abbas to address the international body remotely after the US barred more than 80 Palestinians from entering the country.
“What Israel is carrying out is not merely an aggression. It is a war crime and a crime against humanity that is both documented and monitored, and it will be recorded in history books and the pages of international conscience as one of the most horrific chapters of humanitarian tragedy in the 20th and 21st centuries,” Abbas said on Thursday.
Abbas reiterated a number of declarations he made at a special session led by France and Saudi Arabia on Monday, when France and several other countries formally recognised Palestinian statehood. In the speech, he called for an immediate ceasefire, unimpeded entry for humanitarian aid through UN organisations, the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and the withdrawal of Israel from territory in Gaza.
He also issued a rejection of the Palestinian Authority’s rival Hamas, which he said would have no role in a postwar governance of Gaza – a key condition of Israel and the United States. However Abbas and the Palestinian Authority administer the West Bank but not Gaza, and do not have a direct role in negotiations over a ceasefire or postwar planning for Gaza.
“Despite all that our people have suffered, we reject what Hamas carried out on October 7 – actions that targeted Israeli civilians and took them hostages – because these actions do not represent the Palestinian people, nor do they represent their just struggle for freedom and independence,” he said.
He said that Gaza was an “integral part of the state of Palestine, and that we are ready to bear full responsibility for governance and security there”.
He also directed attention to Israel’s expansion of settlements in the West Bank, rejecting what he called the ambitions of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of constructing a “greater Israel”. Plans to expand the E1 settlement would “divide the West Bank into two parts and would isolate occupied Jerusalem from its surroundings and would undermine the option of the two-state solution, in a blatant violation of international law and relevant security council resolutions”.
Netanyahu is scheduled to speak at the United Nations on Friday. Rightwing allies in his government have called for a formal annexation of up to 82% of the West Bank, a “red line” for a number of US allies in the Gulf that would deepen a global standoff pitting Europe and Arab states against Israel and its main backer, the United States.
Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, on Wednesday said that he believed the US would also restrain Israel from formally annexing territory in the West Bank, telling the France 24 television channel: “I think it is a red line for the USA.”
In the speech, Abbas also condemned the conflation of support for Palestine with antisemitism, thanking “all the peoples and organizations around the world who protested in support of the rights of the Palestinian people to freedom and independence and to stop the war, destruction and starvation”.
Finally, he said that Palestinians would not leave their lands.
“Palestine is ours. Jerusalem is the jewel of our heart and our eternal capital,” he said. “We will not leave our homeland.”