Citizens Rally in Gaza to Demand Abbas to Step Down

Thousands of Palestinian citizens on Sunday rallied to demand the departure of Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas.

News ID: 443651

Date: 26 February 2019 - 18:28

RNA - A reporter for the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) announced that the protesters chanted different slogans and carried placards condemning Abbas and what they called his crimes in Gaza, Palinfo reported.

The demonstrators also demanded Abbas to lift his sanctions on the flow of funds from and into Gaza and called for holding free and fair elections for the presidency, the legislative council and the national council.

The Hamas Movement has also described Abbas as “the man who sees only himself” and his unilateral decisions as aimed at separating the West Bank from other areas of Palestine.

In press remarks to the Palestinian Information Center (PIC), Hamas Spokesman Hazem Qasem said that the hostile rhetoric against Hamas and the resistance factions in Gaza is “consistent with the plans aimed at paving the way for the US-backed deal of the century and separating the West Bank from Gaza”.

Commenting on senior Fatah official Hussein al-Sheikh’s recent threat to take decisions and measures on the future of Hamas’s presence in the Palestinian arena, Qasem stressed that al-Sheikh should work on ending the Israeli occupation and not the resistance factions and Hamas.

“The Palestinian Authority persists in its hostile rhetoric against the resistance movements, the Gaza Strip and Hamas while using soft language with the Israeli occupation,” the spokesman stressed.

He affirmed that Fatah’s persistence in hijacking the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its decision-making and refusing to work in partnership with other national groups is one of the most prominent reasons for the inter-Palestinian division.

The spokesman also accused Fatah of flouting all the reconciliation agreements that had been signed since 2005 by its insistence on not taking any step to reform the PLO.

847/940