Addressing the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Israeli regime for conducting “a frantic campaign to confiscate our lands, to build settlements, to loot our resources as if this land is empty…."
He said, “Our trust in the possibility of achieving peace based on justice and international law unfortunately is waning due to the Israeli occupation policies,” adding, the occupying regime “has decided not to be our partner in the peace process."
Abbas said he was speaking on behalf of more than 14 million Palestinians whose fathers and ancestors "lived through the tragic Nakba, 74 years ago."
The Nakba (Catastrophe) Day in 1948 saw the Israeli regime claiming existence after forcibly driving some 700,000 Palestinians from their homes during a heavily-Western-backed war.
The Palestinians, Abbas added, "are still living the spillover of this Nakba, which is a humiliation for the whole of humanity, especially for those who have conspired, planned, and executed this heinous crime.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, he demanded the United States--the Israeli regime's biggest international supporter--to pursue the regime's assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian-American journalist, who was shot and killed by Israeli snipers in the occupied West Bank in May.
“As well as having Palestinian nationality, she was also an American citizen,” Abbas said.
“I dare the United States to prosecute those who killed this American national, but they won’t. Why? Because they are Israelis,” referring to the Washington-backed impunity, with which the Israeli regime kills Palestinians and violates their rights on a daily basis.