Palestinian Authority president says Palestinians won't accept displacement from Gaza
On the 59th anniversary of the founding of the Fatah party, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says Palestinian people will not accept displacement from their land, the news agency Wafa reported Sunday.
"Today, our steadfast Palestinian people are subjected to a comprehensive war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem, with the aim of liquidating our national cause and turning it into a humanitarian cause, in a repetition of the 1948 Nakba," Abbas is quoted as saying in the report.
The Nakba, or "catastrophe," is when roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in what is now Israel.
"But we tell them, the more your aggression and terrorism increase, the stronger, more determined, and more determined our people will become in adhering to their land and their legitimate national rights," Abbas is quoted as saying.
Tens of thousands internally displaced: Israel has urged more residents to evacuate as it expands its ground offensive into parts of central and southern Gaza. The United Nations warns that some 150,000 people in those areas — many already internally displaced from northern parts of the enclave — have "nowhere to go."
About 100,000 more people have recently crowded into Rafah at the far southern end of Gaza, already the most densely populated part of the territory, the UN says. Civilians there say conditions are abysmal.
Some context: Abbas is the leader of the Palestinian Authority, a government body with limited self-rule in the West Bank. It is a separate entity from Hamas, which controls Gaza and is at war with Israel.
The Palestinian Authority was established in the 1993 Oslo Accords, a peace pact between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization that saw the PLO give up armed resistance against Israel in return for promises of an independent Palestinian state.
Hamas took control of Gaza after a brief civil war with Fatah, a rival Palestinian faction that is the backbone of the Palestinian Authority.
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