Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will address the United Nations General Assembly via videoconference on Thursday, after the United States denied him a visa to attend the 80th session of the international body, which included a declaration by Western countries recognizing the State of Palestine.
Abbas's speech comes a day after US envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed that President Donald Trump had presented a new plan to Arab and Muslim countries aimed at ending the war. This comes as Israel continues its strikes and expands its ground offensive on Gaza City, the largest city in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Washington denied visas to Abbas and approximately 80 other members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or Palestinian Authority (PA) officials who were scheduled to attend the General Assembly. The latter expressed regret over Washington's decision and allowed Abbas to participate via videoconference.
The US State Department previously accused Palestinian officials of waging "lawfare" by resorting to the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice to prosecute Israel, and urged them to stop "attempts to bypass negotiations through international lawfare campaigns" and "efforts to secure unilateral recognition of a hypothetical Palestinian state."
On the sidelines of the General Assembly, Western countries that are traditional allies of Israel, led by France and Britain, announced their recognition of the State of Palestine. This move was condemned by Washington and the Jewish state, whose officials threatened to respond by annexing parts of the occupied West Bank.
At least 151 of the 193 countries at the United Nations have now recognized the State of Palestine, according to an AFP tally, a move that remains politically symbolic.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is addressing the United Nations on Friday, stressed that this recognition "is not binding on Israel in any way."
Abbas, meanwhile, welcomed the move and delivered a video address to the two-state solution conference held in New York on Monday, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.
In his speech, the Palestinian president condemned the attack launched by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in the Gaza Strip, as well as the "crimes of the Israeli occupation."
He also called on the movement to surrender its weapons, stressing that "Hamas will have no role in governance, and that it and other factions must surrender their weapons to the Palestinian Authority."
- A New American Proposal -
Arab and Western countries are seeking to have the Palestinian Authority play a role in governing Gaza following the war that caused massive destruction in Gaza and a catastrophic humanitarian crisis that, according to the United Nations in August, reached the level of famine.
On the sidelines of the General Assembly, Witkoff said that the United States presented "a new 21-point plan for peace in the Middle East and Gaza" during a meeting between President Donald Trump and leaders of Arab and Muslim countries on Tuesday in New York.
He said, "We have hope, and I can say that we are confident that in the coming days we will be able to announce a breakthrough," explaining that the plan "addresses Israel's concerns as well as the concerns of all our neighbors in the region."
A White House official told Agence France-Presse that Trump wants to "bring an end quickly" to the war in the Gaza Strip, noting that the countries participating in the meeting "expressed their hope to work with Special Envoy Witkoff to examine the president's plan."
On another note, a meeting will be held at the United Nations headquarters on Thursday regarding the future of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on Wednesday, "For 75 years, UNRWA has provided free basic education to millions of Palestinian refugees in the region. It has plans and the capacity to support the gradual return to education in Gaza when a ceasefire is declared."
- 11 killed Thursday morning -
On the ground, the Civil Defense in Gaza announced that 11 people were killed Thursday morning in an Israeli airstrike that hit a house housing displaced people.
Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal told AFP that "11 people were killed and there are several missing and wounded as a result of an Israeli airstrike on a home of the Abu Dahrouj family, which was sheltering displaced people north of Al-Zawaida," in the central Gaza Strip.
He confirmed that "several children" were among the dead.
Israel launched a ground and air campaign in Gaza City, as part of its declared goal of completely controlling it, which it considers the last stronghold of Hamas, nearly two years after the outbreak of the war that devastated the Strip.
The Israeli army said on Sunday that approximately 550,000 Palestinians had fled the city in recent days, while the civil defense agency AFP reported on Friday that 450,000 had fled from Gaza City to the southern part of the Strip since the end of August.
Gaza is the largest and most densely populated city in the Strip, particularly after a large number of displaced people were displaced following the destruction of their towns in the north. In August, the United Nations estimated the population of Gaza and its surrounding areas at more than one million.
The Jewish state is facing international pressure to end the war that erupted following a Hamas attack on its territory on October 7, 2023.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Over the course of nearly two years, the Israeli military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 65,419 people, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which the United Nations considers reliable.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, most of Gaza's 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once to other parts of the Strip.
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