The Palestinian president blames Hamas for the ongoing genocide in Gaza

RAMALLAH:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel and the United States were responsible for an attack that killed dozens in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, but the Western-backed leader also blamed Hamas for the war in Gaza.

His comments signal growing tension between Abbas’s Fatah faction and the Islamist group Hamas, which has accused the Palestinian president of siding with Israel.

Israel said the attack was aimed at killing Hamas military chief Mohammad Deif and his aide. It remains unclear whether Daif or his deputy were killed in the attack that left at least 90 Palestinians dead and 300 wounded, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

“The Palestinian presidency condemns the massacre and holds the Israeli government fully responsible, as well as the US government that provides all kinds of support to the occupation and its crimes,” Abbas said in a statement released by his office.

But Abbas, whose authority maintains limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, placed some blame on Hamas.

“The Presidency sees that by eschewing national unity and providing free pretexts to the occupation state, the Hamas movement is a partner in bearing legal, moral and political responsibility for the continuation of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip,” the statement said. .

Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007 when it took over the coastal region from Abbas loyalists.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zohri told Reuters that Abbas’s statement meant the Palestinian Authority had “chosen to be in the same trench as the occupation.”

An Israeli strike on Khan Younis in Gaza on Saturday, which Palestinian officials said killed dozens, targeted 58-year-old Hamas military leader Mohammed Dayf.

Such an attitude will not succeed in blackmailing the resistance or pressuring it,” Abu Zohri said.

Efforts by Arab mediators, led by Egypt, have so far failed to reconcile the power struggles between the two sides.

Another Hamas leader, Bassem Naim, who participated in earlier reconciliation talks with Abbas’ Fatah, said Abbas was to blame for the failure to reach a unity deal.

Naim said Abbas’s comments made him and his authority “an accomplice of the Zionist enemy and its crimes not only in Gaza but in the entire Palestinian land.”