PA’s Abbas accuses Hamas of giving Israel ‘pretexts’ for Gaza war with Oct. 7 attack

Responding to PA chief, who has refrained from condemning the deadly onslaught itself, terror group boasts the massacre put ‘Palestinian cause at the forefront of priorities’

This handout picture from the official Bahrain News Agency shows Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas (C) being received in Manama on May 15, 2024 ahead of the 33rd Arab League Summit. (Bahrain News Agency/AFP)
This handout picture from the official Bahrain News Agency shows Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas (C) being received in Manama on May 15, 2024 ahead of the 33rd Arab League Summit. (Bahrain News Agency/AFP)

The Hamas terror group gave Israel pretexts and justifications for the war in Gaza with its October 7 attack, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the 33rd Arab League Summit in Manama on Thursday.

“The military action that Hamas carried out, at its own decision, on that day, October 7, gave Israel even more excuses and reasons to attack in the Gaza Strip, an attack it has continued with full force, with murder, destruction and uprooting,” Abbas said, according to a Channel 12 translation.

“We oppose harming civilians, all civilians,” added Abbas, who has refrained from condemning the October 7 onslaught itself.

Following the comments, Hamas voiced its “regret over the remarks,” asserting that the atrocities it perpetrated in southern Israel, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and kidnapped another 252, mostly civilians, “placed our Palestinian cause at the forefront of priorities, achieving strategic gains.”

The terror group also welcomed the league’s call for an “immediate” ceasefire in Gaza and urged “brotherly Arab states to take the necessary measures to compel the (Israeli) occupation to stop its aggression.”

The summit also called for a UN peacekeeping force in the West Bank and Gaza along with “an international conference… to resolve the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution.”

Speaking at the summit, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the Gaza war as “an open wound that threatens to infect the entire region,” while calling for “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”

Guterres said, “the only permanent way to end the cycle of violence and instability is through a two-state solution.”

This handout picture from the official Bahrain News Agency (BNA) shows United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (L) being received by Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed al-Khalifa, Diplomatic Affairs Advisor to the King of Bahrain, in Manama on May 15, 2024 ahead of the 33rd Arab League Summit. (Bahrain News Agency/AFP)

The so-called “Manama Declaration” issued by the Arab nations also urged “all Palestinian factions to join under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization,” which is dominated by Abbas’s ruling Fatah movement.

It added that it considered the PLO “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah, which administers the West Bank, in a 2007 coup. International efforts since then have so far failed to reconcile the two factions, though in recent months both China and Russia have hosted representatives from the Palestinian groups for unity talks.

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