President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas said today at the celebration of the 59th anniversary of the establishment of Fatah, of which he is the leader, that the Palestinian people will not agree to move out of their land.
Today, the steadfast Palestinian people are being subjected to an all-out war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem, with the aim of repeating the Nakba of 1948, Abbas said, the Wafa news agency reported.
The Nakba, or "catastrophe," is the term Palestinians use for the tragedy when about 700.000 Palestinians were evicted and driven from their homes in what was then the state of Israel.
"We are telling them that the more your aggression and terrorism increase, the stronger and more determined our people will become in protecting their country and their legitimate national rights," Abbas said.
Israel's "war of destruction will not break our will, we will remain steadfast on our land and continue the struggle until one day we achieve victory and win independence," Abbas said, adding that the West Bank, including Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, is an indivisible geographical entity, transmitted by N1.
The Palestinian leader said that the plan of the Israeli occupation authorities to destroy the Palestinian national project and to rob the Palestinians of their land will not go through.
"We are telling the whole world that military and security solutions will not bring security and peace to anyone, but will push the region and the world to the brink of explosion, and that the only solution is to recognize the right of the Palestinian people to freedom and independence," Abbas said.
According to him, we must move towards a political solution based on resolutions on international legitimacy, holding an international peace conference that would end the Israeli occupation and form the state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
At least 35 people were killed today in Israeli attacks on the central part of the Gaza Strip, hospital officials said.
Israel's military continued attacks on Palestinian territory a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the war would continue for many more months, defying international calls for a ceasefire.
A military statement said Israeli forces were also operating to the south in Gaza's second-largest city, Khan Yunis, and residents confirmed strikes in the central part of the small enclave, as Israel announced this Sunday that the area was a new focus of the war.
Israel says it wants to destroy the military and governance capabilities of Hamas in Gaza, from where the Islamic extremist organization launched attacks on southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1.200 people and taking 240 hostages, according to Israeli authorities.
Then began an unprecedented Israeli offensive from the air, and then from the ground, in which more than 21.800 Palestinians died, according to the data of the Ministry of Health there.
An Israeli airstrike killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens in the Zuayd area of central Gaza, eyewitnesses said, claiming they were innocent civilians and that Israeli warplanes bombed entire families.
Officials at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah said the 13 bodies were among a total of 35 received on Sunday.
The Israeli army said it was fighting extremists in Khan Younis, where Hamas leaders are believed to be hiding.
Its forces also operate in the north of Gaza in Shati, where a bomb was found in a kindergarten.
Meanwhile, Hamas continues to fire rockets into southern Israel.
The country has faced heavy resistance from Hamas since the ground offensive began in late October that killed 172 soldiers.
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The Minister of Finance of Israel, the leader of the ultra-right Religious Zionism party, Bezelel Smotrich, said that Palestinians should be encouraged to emigrate from Gaza in order to leave a different situation there after the end of the war.
"We need to encourage emigration from there. If there were 100.000 to 200.000 Arabs in the Belt and not two million, the whole dialogue about the day after the war would be completely different. They want to leave. They lived in the ghetto for 75 years and they need to." Smotrich told Israel Military Radio.
Israeli leaders have repeatedly denied claims that they seek to displace Palestinians, and the mere mention of the idea has drawn angry condemnation from Israel's allies.
However, it is not clear what Smotrich thinks where the residents could emigrate to, according to Israeli media.
When asked if he believed that Israel must re-establish Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, the minister replied that the Jewish state must control the area.
He believes that there is no Israeli who does not want to see, as he said, "Jewish settlements everywhere."
Answering the question whether he wants Gaza to be settled again, he said that he wants Israel to solve the problem of that territory.
Many of Israel's leaders have repeatedly rejected the idea of establishing Jewish settlements in Gaza, although military operations in the Strip, aimed at destroying Hamas after the October 7 massacre in southern Israel that killed 1.200 people and took 240 hostages, have raised the hopes of some members of the movement. settlers.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu postponed a War Cabinet meeting on post-war Gaza last Sunday, apparently under pressure from far-right coalition partners, including Smotrich.
Netanyahu has so far refused to hold meetings on the topic because he apparently does not want to reveal what role he expects Palestinian Authority officials to play in managing Gaza's civilian affairs after the war.
The Palestinian Authority controls parts of the other Palestinian territory of the occupied West Bank and is dominated by Hamas's rival, the more moderate Fatah of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Smotrich said Israel should discuss reviving civilian settlements in the Gaza Strip as part of planning for the enclave once the Hamas government is overthrown.
He also denied that any of Gaza's roughly two million residents are innocent and called on Israel to "encourage voluntary emigration."
The Israeli army withdrew and evacuated Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Two years later, Hamas took control of Gaza by force from forces loyal to Fatah.
Since then, Gaza has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade.
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A former minister in the Palestinian Authority was killed today in an Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, the Hamas Health Ministry announced, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.
Yusef Salama (68), a former minister of religion, died in the Magazi refugee camp in the central part of the Gaza Strip, according to sources cited by Agence France-Presse.
Salama was close to Hamas's rival, Fatah, the organization of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and was a minister from February 2005 to March 2006.
He was also a preacher during traditional Friday prayers in the Old City of Jerusalem where the Al Aqsa Mosque is located.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that his country has shown unparalleled morality in the war in the Gaza Strip and rejected South Africa's accusations of genocide in the Palestinian territory.
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"We will continue our defensive war, which has no equal in justification and morality," Netanyahu said at the session of the Government of Israel in Tel Aviv, adding that the Israeli army is acting "in the most moral way possible", reported the Agence France-Presse.
"Last week we eliminated more than 100 terrorists, it happens almost every day, we will eliminate Hamas, return our hostages and win the war," said the Israeli leader.
Referring to South Africa's accusations against Israel, he said that Hamas had come to commit genocide.
"He would kill us all if he could. In contrast, the army acts as morally as possible, doing everything to avoid harming civilians while Hamas does everything to hurt them and use them as human shields," Netanyahu said.
"I ask: where were you, South Africa and others who preach to us, when millions were killed and driven from their homes in Syria, Yemen and other areas. You were not there because all you do is lies and vanity," Netanyahu said. .
In Israeli military operations in Gaza, 21.822 people, mostly women, children and minors, have been killed since the beginning of the war on October 7, according to the data of the Ministry of Health there.
It is in retaliation for the Hamas attack on Israel in which about 1.140 people, mostly civilians, were killed.
The International Court of Justice, the UN's highest court, announced on Friday that South Africa had accused Israel of "acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza".
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Israeli jets intensified attacks on central Gaza today, residents and medical workers said, as battles raged through the rubble of towns and refugee camps in a war that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would take "many more months" to end. Reuters agency.
The airstrikes hit Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureiyya in the center of the Palestinian enclave, killing eight people in one house and forcing many to flee to Rafah on the Egyptian border from the front lines where Israeli tanks battle Hamas fighters.
Red Crescent footage released today shows the chaotic aftermath of the strike in central Gaza, as rescuers worked in the dark to pull an injured child from the rubble.
The Ministry of Health in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip has announced that 21.822 people have been killed in Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip since the war began on October 7.
In the last 24 hours, 150 people died and 286 were wounded, that source announced today.
It was also stated that since the beginning of the war, 56.451 people have been wounded, reported Agence France-Presse.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army announced that two more soldiers were killed in the conflict in the Gaza Strip and that 27 soldiers had been killed since the ground offensive began on October 172.
The war began after Palestinian extremists led by Hamas attacked southern Israel from Gaza. Around 1.200 people were killed then, most of them civilians, and 240 hostages were taken to the Palestinian territory, according to the Associated Press.
Israeli authorities claim that 129 hostages are still being held.
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Israel's government bears responsibility for the October 7 attack by Hamas and an investigative committee must be formed to hold accountable those who were negligent, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said.
Cohen added that restoring security comes first, Al Jazeera reported.
"There will be no Hamas and we will return the abducted. We will take security control over Gaza," Cohen said, N1 reports.
An attack by Hamas on October 7 killed around 1.200 people and more than 200 were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip.
On the other hand, in the fierce response of the Israeli forces and attacks on Gaza from the air and from the ground, more than 20 thousand Palestinians were killed, of which a large number of women and children.
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Today marks the end of an extremely difficult year for Israelis and Palestinians, and there is no imminent end to the deadliest Israeli military offensive in Gaza, triggered by the unprecedented attacks on Israel on October 7.
In the last hours of 2023, there is no respite in Israeli airstrikes, artillery fire, or ground fighting with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, even though Palestinians hoped to, as they say, welcome the New Year in their homes with their families.
Hamas' health ministry announced that at least 21.672 people, mostly children and women, had been killed in Israeli military operations, far more than in any previous offensive.
The ministry announced today that many people were killed in strikes last night in Zawajda in central Gaza and the nearby Al-Mugazi refugee camp.
The clashes began with attacks by Palestinian extremists led by Hamas from Gaza on October 7, killing 1.140 people in Israel, most of them civilians.
About 250 hostages were then taken, and Israel states that another 129 are still in captivity.
The Israeli army announced that 170 soldiers were killed in the fighting in Gaza.
The siege of Gaza, imposed two days after the start of the war, has caused shortages of food, drinking water, fuel and medicine, and aid can only be delivered sporadically.
According to UN data, 85 percent of Gaza's 2,4 million residents have left their homes, fleeing the conflict.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the threat of infectious diseases is growing, and the UN has warned that in just a few weeks, famine will prevail in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last night that the war against Hamas will continue for many months until the Palestinian extremist organization is eliminated.
As he spoke, more than a thousand relatives of the hostages and others demonstrated in Tel Aviv, increasing pressure on the government to return these people home.
International mediators who helped broker a week-long truce in late November and free more than 100 hostages continue to make efforts to secure a new lull in the conflict.
Aksios and the Israeli website Ynet, citing unnamed officials, reported that Qatari officials expressed the willingness of both sides to resume negotiations on a ceasefire and a new operation to release the hostages.
A Hamas delegation was in Cairo to discuss Egypt's ceasefire plan and the phased release of hostages for Palestinian prisoners and an eventual end to the war, sources close to the organization, which rules Gaza, said.
Islamic Jihad, a smaller extremist organization fighting alongside Hamas, said on Saturday it was considering Egypt's proposal.
Asked about the negotiations, Netanyahu said that Hamas is "setting all kinds of ultimatums" that Israel will not accept, but that "certain change" is being seen.
However, he does not want, as he said, to encourage unrealistic expectations.
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