Mahmoud Abbas addresses the UN General Assembly. Mahmoud Abbas at the General Assembly: “Palestine will remain ours” UN
President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas addressed world leaders on Thursday during the general debate of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, stressing that the Palestinian people will not leave their homeland – “the land of their ancestors.”
“Palestine will remain ours. And if anyone leaves, it will be the usurpers occupying it,” he said.
Abbas stressed that the Palestinians have been experiencing “one of the most horrific crimes of our time” for almost a year.
“This is a crime of a full-scale genocidal war waged by Israel. A crime that has killed more than 40,000 martyrs in Gaza alone and left thousands more under the rubble. A crime that has left more than 100,000 people harmed to date,” he said.
Entire Palestinian families have been wiped out, he said, completely and forever. The Palestinian president noted the spread of disease, the lack of clean water and medicine, and the fact that more than two million Gazans have been forced to flee their homes. Violence also continues in the West Bank and Jerusalem, he said.
Abbas referred to the Israeli prime minister’s “lie” that Israeli troops did not kill innocent civilians in Gaza. “I ask you, who then killed more than 15,000 children and as many women and old people out of a total of 40,000? And who then continues to kill them, I ask you?,” he asked world leaders.