In virtual UN speech, Abbas condemns Hamas for targeting civilians on Oct. 7, Israel for Gaza ‘genocide’

NEW YORK — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas begins his virtual address to the United Nations General Assembly by noting that he is doing so on the eve of the two-year anniversary of Israel’s “genocide, destruction and starvation” campaign in Gaza, while also reiterating his condemnation of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.

Abbas says the war has killed and wounded roughly 220,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom he says are women, children and elderly, relying on figures from the Hamas-run health ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.

He highlights Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank, including the recent approval of the E1 settlement project, which aims to forestall efforts to establish a viable, contiguous Palestinian state. Abbas also speaks to unchecked Israeli settler violence.

“They burn homes and fields, they uproot trees and attack villages and attack unarmed Palestinian civilians. In fact, they kill them in broad daylight under the protection of the Israeli occupation army,” says Abbas, who is one of the only world leaders authorized to speak virtually. The US issued a visa ban on dozens of top PA officials in response to the decisions by Western countries to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state.

“Despite all that our people have suffered, we reject what Hamas carried out on the seventh of October. These actions that targeted Israeli civilians and took them hostage… do not represent the Palestinian people, nor do they represent their just struggle for freedom and independence,” Abbas says, in a slightly more detailed condemnation than the ones he has issued in the past, including at a Monday two-state solution conference.