President Mahmoud Abbas Tuesday issued a statement on the 35th anniversary of Palestinian Declaration of Independence Day. The statement goes as follows: “People stationed in Jerusalem and the outskirts of Jerusalem… our steadfast people in the heroic Gaza Strip… and on the banks of steadfastness and steadfastness… You who are clutching the embers of hope to return from exile and refugee camps. ” I am speaking to you today, on the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and we are facing together a barbaric war of aggression and an open war of genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, our eternal capital, and a massacre carried out by the occupying state in front of the world, in order to break… Our will and the uprooting of our national presence in our land, the land of our fathers and grandfathers in which our people have lived for more than six thousand years. The unjust, aggressive war to which we are exposed is a war against the Palestin
ian existence and the Palestinian national identity. The identity of the land and the identity of man, and it is an episode in the series of aggression that has continued for more than a century. It is also a disgrace on the foreheads of those who support this aggression and provide it with political and military cover. It’s the remains of our children who are torn apart by the missiles of this Israeli aggression, and the blood of our women. Our men, whose hopes and lives are being assassinated by the missiles of the aggression army, that will be a curse to the occupation and to those who stand behind it or remain silent about the war crimes it commits against our people in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem. Our great people in Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and all of Palestine, and in the refugee camps and diaspora, From the first moment of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, and that ongoing aggression also in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, we stood with our entire people,
and behind us our Arab and Islamic nation and the free people of the world, in the face of this barbaric aggression, for which our people paid a heavy price in the blood of their children and their capabilities, and we put before us a set of national priorities that represent the framework for our work at this dangerous stage in which our national cause is experiencing. Our first priorities now, which we are working on with all our energy, are to stop the barbaric aggression against our people, and to protect this people from further bloodshed. A drop of blood from a Palestinian child, or from a woman or a man among our people, is more precious to us than the world and nothing else. We want a safe, dignified, free life for our people in their homeland and in their free, independent, fully sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital. This is our strategy, this is our goal, and we will continue to fight for it until it is achieved, God willing. We have rejected with all force, and we will always reject, al
l plans to displace and deport our people from their homeland. These diabolical plans are not hidden from us. Rather, they have become exposed and blatantly spoken about by some of the occupation leaders without shame. But we have always thwarted them, and we will continue to confront them with all resolve. Palestine is our only homeland that we will not accept as an alternative, and if there is anyone who must leave our land, it is the occupation, and only the occupation. We have succeeded, thanks to God, in mobilizing the entire world with us in rejecting the occupation’s plans to displace the residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and we will continue to work with all our energy to win this battle for survival, despite all the difficulties facing us. This is a national, humanitarian and religious duty, before it is a political option. For this reason, we are working and will continue to work to secure all elements of the steadfastness of our people, especially in the Gaza St
rip now, the Gaza Strip, which was and will remain forever an integral part of the land of the State of Palestine, and it is an integral part of our national responsibilities that we cannot abandon. Therefore, we categorically reject talking about the Gaza Strip in isolation from the West Bank, including Jerusalem. The future of the Gaza Strip is the future of the West Bank, including Jerusalem, just as the present of the Gaza Strip is the same as the present of the West Bank, including Jerusalem. One people… one issue. One suffering…one national struggle… One national flag, one Palestinian state, and one political future. This is our decision and this is our choice. The Declaration of Independence, whose memory we live in today, was a Palestinian national decision that crowned the Palestine Liberation Organization’s decades of national struggle to protect the Palestinian national existence and establish identity. The Palestinian character of our people and our cause… our people who decided, throug
h their struggle and sacrifices, that the Palestine Liberation Organization would be their sole legitimate representative, the bearer of their national standard, and the guardian of the dream of independence, return, and statehood. Our people, and we with them and in them, will remain this steadfast, armed with the independent national decision, until all hopes are fulfilled. Our people and their national aspirations, by embodying the Declaration of Independence as a national and political reality on the land of Palestine, and this will happen sooner than later, God willing. We have long said to the world, and we will always confirm this, that a just and comprehensive peace cannot be achieved through occupation, aggression, or military solutions, but rather through recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital in accordance with international legitimacy resolutions, and the return of refugees, and today
we have the world has become more aware and more convinced of this, and we will not stop the national struggle until we achieve our freedom, independence, and state… and the occupation will inevitably end. In this context, I do not fail to salute the countries and peoples of our Arab and Islamic nation, and the countries and peoples of the world, who have stood and are standing with our people in their legitimate struggle, and reject the continuation of the occupation and its aggression against our homeland and our people.”
Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA