Abbas calls for sanctions against Israel at UN

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Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas demanded on Monday that the U.N. sanction Israel for alleged breaches of its charter and failure to implement resolutions, Ramallah’s Wafa news outlet reported.

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas addresses the general debate of the U.N. General Assembly’s 79th session on Sept. 26, 2024. Credit: Loey Felipe/U.N. Photo.

Addressing the U.N.’s World Urban Forum in Cairo, Abbas said Israel should be penalized for what he called its “failure to fulfill its obligations upon gaining U.N. membership in 1949 and for not adhering to General Assembly resolutions 181 and 194,” according to the Wafa news report.

U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 was adopted in 1947 and called for the partition of the British Mandate into two states: one Jewish and one Arab. It was rejected by Palestinian and Arab nations, with the latter launching a war of annihilation against the nascent Jewish state.

Resolution 194 (1948), which is not legally binding, recommends that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”

Abbas claimed that the “implementation of relevant U.N. resolutions, especially the recent General Assembly decision on the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion, along with granting Palestine full U.N. membership, are essential for achieving justice and stability.”

The P.A. chief’s remarks closely resembled those of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestinian rights whose anti-Jewish statements have been widely criticized, who told the Democracy Now outlet last week that Israel should be suspended from the world body due to Jerusalem’s alleged attempts to “erase Palestinianness.”

“There has been the violations of hundreds of resolutions by the—on Israel, over occupied Palestinian territory, by the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, and steady violation of international humanitarian law, human rights law, the Apartheid Convention, the Genocide Convention,” Albanese charged.

Last month, Abbas claimed that Israel is a “colonial project” that would be defeated if the United States withdrew its support, the Jewish state’s Kan News public broadcaster reported, quoting Russian state-controlled media.

The Kan report cited an interview that aired on Russia-1 with Russia Today chief editor Margarita Simonyan, who met Abbas on the sidelines of the BRICS summit on Oct. 22-24, held in Kazan in central Russia.

According to Simonyan, the Palestinian leader told her over coffee, “We have an issue with the United States. They are the ones perpetrating everything. Who brought Zionism to this country? The colonizers.”

Officials of Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction sat down with Hamas terrorists in Cairo in recent days for talks on the establishment of a body to manage Gaza after the conclusion of Israel’s war against terror.

Last month, a P.A. official told Reuters that the terrorist groups were in negotiations to form a committee to run Gaza and manage its border crossings after talks for a unity government faltered. At the time, the committee’s form and duties remained unclear, the P.A. official said.

On Sept. 25, P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa announced that Fatah had agreed to meet with Hamas in Cairo. Mustafa said the talks would focus on forging initial deals “to arrange the situation” in Gaza. He confirmed his “readiness to administer the Gaza Strip the day after the war,” the Ma’an News Agency reported, “without excluding anyone.”