PALESTINIAN President Mahmoud Abbas has held the US administration fully responsible for the ongoing bloodshed in Gaza, the latest of which was the horrific Israeli massacre yesterday morning in the town of Beit Lahiya.
In a press statement, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the official spokesman for President Abbas said: ‘The Israeli occupation forces are translating the continuous US support into genocidal massacres, with mass killings that claim the lives of dozens of children and women, as we witnessed today in Beit Lahiya and other cities in Gaza.’
He also condemned Israeli assaults on the West Bank, including villages, cities, and refugee camps, alongside the ongoing attacks by settlers.
Abu Rudeineh added: ‘We hold the US administration fully responsible for the continuation of this bloody aggression, due to its provision of political cover to the Israeli occupation authorities, allowing them to evade accountability and defy international legal resolutions, the most recent of which is the UN General Assembly resolution regarding the implementation of the Hague Court’s ruling to halt the aggression and end the Israeli occupation.’
He demanded that the US pressure Israel to cease its attacks and halt the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people. He called for the full implementation of international law, including Resolution 2735, which urges an immediate ceasefire and the unrestricted delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
He warned that if the US fails to intervene, the cycle of violence and instability will escalate, further threatening the region. ‘If this continues, the entire region risks being engulfed in flames, and no one will be able to enjoy peace or stability,’ he added.
Palestinian resistance movement Hamas censured the Israeli regime’s fascist occupation army for a ferocious attack on a residential building that killed scores of people in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday morning.
At least 50 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on a five-storey residential building in the Beit Lahiya area of northern Gaza on Sunday morning, with several others trapped under the rubble.
‘The criminal bombing carried out by the fascist occupation army targeting a residential building in Beit Lahiya, north of the Gaza Strip, and destroying it over the heads of its residents – resulting in the martyrdom of more than fifty citizens, over a third of whom were children – is a blatant act of Zionist genocide, ethnic cleansing, and brutal revenge against defenceless civilians,’ Hamas said in a statement.
Stressing that the bloodshed is a continuation of the genocide and retaliation against defenceless civilians, the resistance group said: ‘This atrocity unfolds before the ears and eyes of the world.’
Hamas underlined that the continuation of such barbaric massacres, genocide, and starvation campaigns aimed at ‘displacing our people and liquidating our national cause will not succeed in achieving their objectives or breaking the will of our people’.
‘We call on the international community, the United Nations, and Arab and Islamic governments to break the state of paralysis and silence regarding these crimes and to take immediate action to stop the ongoing massacres in the Gaza Strip, particularly in the north,’ the statement said.
‘We also demand an end to the criminal siege and starvation campaign targeting civilians in Gaza, which has expanded to encompass all areas of the Strip.’
The Israeli regime dispatched its tanks to Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia last month in what it said was aimed at combating Hamas members launching retaliatory strikes and preventing them from regrouping.
The towns have been besieged for more than 40 days, without food, water, medicine, or aid, and under constant bombing, shelling, and Israeli drones and quadcopters.
Gaza’s Government Media Office reported that the multi-storey residential building housed six forcibly displaced Palestinian families.
The Ministry of Health’s Director-General Munir al-Bursh said that 30 per cent of the victims of the Beit Lahiya massacre were children, dozens of others were wounded, with many more trapped under the rubble.
Earlier on Sunday, separate Israeli air raids killed at least 17 people in the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza.
In southern Gaza’s Rafah city, an Israeli bombing killed five Palestinians on Saturday. Israel also attacked the United Nations-run Abu Assi school in the Shati refugee camp, killing 10 Palestinians and injuring 20 others, including women and children.