Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday called for children participating in protests near the Gaza Strip’s frontier with Israel to be kept away from the border fence between the two territories.
In the last several weeks, especially on Fridays, protests have occurred in the border region between Gaza and Israel to support the return of Palestinian refugees to their former homes in Israel.
“Keep the children away. We do not want to become a people of disabilities. We will go out, protest and do everything, but it is not necessary to send [the children] to the [fence] to be shot and killed,” Abbas said in a speech at a meeting of the Palestinian National Council, a top Palestine Liberation Organization body. “I don’t want the upcoming generation to be a handicapped generation.”
Since the protests started, Israeli security forces have killed at least 45 Palestinians in the border region and wounded thousands of others, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. Many of the killed and wounded were shot near the border fence.
The IDF has described the protests in the border region during the past several weeks as “a violent riot,” asserting that protesters have thrown Molotov cocktails and rocks at its soldiers, opened fire on them, set tires on fire and attempted to pass into Israel’s borders.
Israeli security officials have also warned protesters that approaching the border fence puts their lives in jeopardy.
However, local and international human rights groups and Palestinian officials have accused Israel of targeting and using “excessive force” against “unarmed civilians.”
The protests in the border region are slated to continue in the coming weeks.
In his speech, Abbas also alleged that Israel “is a colonial project.”
He made a similar comment in a speech in January in Ramallah.
The Israeli government holds that Jewish history in Israel dates back thousands of years and that Jews are natives to the country.
Nonetheless, Abbas clarified that even though he believes Israel is “a colonial project,” he still wants to coexist with it in a two-state solution.
“[Israel being a colonial project] does not mean that we should uproot them. We are not saying that…We want to coexist with them on the basis of two states, a Palestinian state and Israel,” Abbas said.
Article source: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-great-show-glaring-flaw-3-takeaways-from-bibi-s-iran-lied-speech-1.6045586
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