President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday announced that the PA government will head to the Gaza Strip next week to start assuming its responsibilities toward Palestinians there.
Addressing the UN General Assembly in New York Abbas expressed his relief at the talks recently held in Cairo to resume reconciliation efforts adding “There can be no Palestinian state in Gaza and no Palestinian state without Gaza.”
Last week witnessed the first series of meetings between leaders from Hamas and Fatah movements after which Hamas announced the dissolution of its administrative committee in Gaza. Hamas said that the decision was taken in response to the Egyptian efforts to end the Palestinian division.
Head of the Hamas Political Bureau Ismail Haneyya who headed Hamas’s delegation to Cairo on Tuesday called on the PA government to come to Gaza and start assuming its responsibilities.
In another context Abbas affirmed that the continued settlement activity and Israel’s refusal to recognize the 1967 borders in disregard for the two-state solution put the mutual recognition signed in Oslo in 1993 into question.
He warned that the ongoing Israeli violations in Occupied Jerusalem might ignite a religious war in the region stressing “We are against terrorism in all its forms and we will fight it on the local regional and international level.” The PA president called for bringing an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian land as part of the counter-terrorism efforts exerted around the world.
