Abbas accuses Israel of carrying out 'extrajudicial killings' of Palestinians

PA president says wave of attacks on Israelis is "inevitable" reaction, calls on international community to provide protection to Palestinians.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the special meeting of Human Rights Council at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland October 28, 2015 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the special meeting of Human Rights Council at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland October 28, 2015
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas repeated his charge on Monday that Israel is seeking to change the status quo at the Temple Mount and carrying out “extrajudicial killings” of Palestinians.
Abbas said that the current wave of Palestinian attacks on Israelis was the “inevitable result of diminishing hopes, the continued strangulation, siege and pressure and the lack of sense of security and safety felt by our people.”
He called on the international community to provide protection to the Palestinians.
In a statement released by Abbas’s office on the occasion of “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” the PA president noted that he had previously cautioned of the “grave consequences of what is happening in and around Jerusalem, including severe restrictions imposed on our people, violations of their civil, political, economic and cultural rights.”
Abbas accused Israel of attempting to “change the identity, historical and demographic character of Jerusalem.” He also accused Israeli security forces of providing protection to settlers and extremists who attack Christian and Muslim holy sites.
Abbas claimed that Israel’s actions were aimed at changing the historic status quo at the Temple Mount. “All of these actions and violations would risk turning the conflict from a political and legal one to a religious conflict, which will have disastrous consequences for everyone,” he warned.
Abbas also repeated his charge that Israel was seeking to establish “temporal and spatial presence at Al-Aqsa Mosque and Haram Al-Sharif.”
Abbas said that the “continuation of the Israeli occupation and its persistence with colonial settlement activities, cruel arrests and detention of civilians, extrajudicial killings of our youths and children, the blockade of Gaza, home demolitions, repeated brutal attacks by Israeli terrorist settlers and provocations against their holy sites affirm Israel’s arrogance and intransigence, its violations of international law, its rejection of peace and its adherence instead to the ideology of colonial expansion, subjugation and greed.”