By Xinhua
Ramallah : Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday reiterated Palestinian National Authority’s (PNA) demands for takeover of the crossing points into the Gaza Strip.
“We are ready to take up the crossings to ease the suffering of our people,” Abbas said during a national ceremony in Ramallah, referring to the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip which came after Hamas violently seized control of the poor coastal enclave in last June.
Abbas said that the PNA had submitted its plan to run the crossings to the United Nations and the Arab League, but urged Hamas to end its control on Gaza to invalidate Israel’s pretext for closing the crossings linking Gaza.
He also asked the Gaza militant groups to stop firing rockets into southern Israel. “Stop! Don’t give Israel excuses,” Abbas said, mainly aiming at the militants led by Hamas.
Though sharply slamming Hamas for routing his long-dominant Fatah forces in Gaza in June, Abbas said the Islamic movement “was part of the Palestinian people.”
But the president, who is also the head of Fatah, reiterated that there will be no talks between his Fatah movement and rival Hamas until Hamas “ends its coup and returns to its mind.”
Amid strict siege and supplies limit, Gaza was facing an unprecedented lack of basic demands, including fuel, power and food.
In a desperate bid to break the siege, Hamas militants blew up the border fence between southern Gaza and Egypt on Wednesday, which led to a flow of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into Egypt’s Sinai coastal town of al-Arish for shopping.