MID: Abbas in urgent contact with other states over Gaza strikes
28 Dec 2008 12:21 AM
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Dec 27 AFP - Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday he was in "urgent contact" with numerous countries over the deadly Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.
"We have carried out urgent contacts with numerous Arab countries and other nations to stop the cowardly aggressions and massacres in the Gaza Strip," Abbas told AFP from Saudi Arabia, which he is visiting.
The Islamist Hamas movement that controls Gaza said the Israeli attacks that day killed at least 155 people.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), presided over by Abbas, called for a strike and protests in solidarity with the people of Gaza.
Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in the centre of Ramallah. One placard read: "We will not forget you, Gaza."
Hundreds more Palestinians protested in south Lebanon. Demonstrators in Ain al-Helweh - the largest of the country's 12 refugee camps with 45,000 residents - burned tyres and dustbins and blocked the main road.
Abbas told AFP he had called Jordan's King Abdullah II and would also be contacting King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
"We will also contact Egypt, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations with the aim of stopping the aggression and restoring the truce," he said.
King Abdullah of Jordan has been in touch with Abbas and with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to "launch an Arab and international initiative aimed at ending the Israeli aggression", the palace said.
The king urged a "return to negotiations which are the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict", it said.
"Abdullah called in the international community to accept its legal and moral responsibility towards the Palestinian people by demanding that Israel stops its aggression against the Gaza strip," the palace said.
A six-month Egyptian-mediated truce between Israel and Hamas expired on December 19 amid continued violations.
Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad also "vigorously condemned the Israeli aggression in Gaza" and called for "its immediate end".
