Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that the Palestinian people would not be displaced in an address to a peace summit in Cairo aimed at preventing the Israel-Gaza crisis from escalating into a regional war.
“We warn of the danger [the] “Evicting our civilians from their homes or expelling them from the West Bank or from Jerusalem,” said Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority, which has jurisdiction over semi-autonomous parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“We will never accept this violent displacement and will stand firm on our land,” Abbas added.
There has been a surge in violence in the West Bank since the militant Hamas group’s surprise attack on Israel near the Gaza Strip on October 7, which killed more than 1,400 people. At least 83 people were killed in clashes with Israeli settlers and police in the West Bank, Agence France-Presse reported on Friday.
In retaliation for the Hamas attack, Israel declared a siege on the Gaza Strip and launched thousands of airstrikes on the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave, killing more than 4,100 people. Israeli authorities have also ordered around 1.1 million civilians to evacuate Gaza City and move to the southern part of the enclave – which borders Egypt – while reportedly preparing a ground attack on Gaza.
At the summit in Cairo on Saturday, Egypt’s leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said he opposed the expulsion of Palestinians to his country. “Egypt says the solution to the Palestinian question is not expulsion, but the only solution is justice and Palestinians’ access to legitimate rights and life in an independent state,” el-Sisi said, according to Portal.