Abbas salutes "our brave and heroic people” carrying out violent riots, saying "these are the ones of whom we are proud, who are a sign of honour"
Headline: “The [PA] president: We’ll act at all levels out of commitment to our national responsibility and we will continue to do what can be done to defend our people”
“[PA] President Mahmoud Abbas… said in his speech during the leadership meeting that was held at the [PA] presidential headquarters in Ramallah yesterday evening [May 12, 2021]: ‘Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the State of Palestine and it has no replacement. We salute its residents who are carrying out Ribat (i.e., religious conflict over land claimed to be Islamic) there. We salute the heroic young people of Palestine who are the pride of the homeland and the people.
These are the ones of whom we are proud and we stand as a sign of honor for their struggle, while they are defending Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, all of Palestine, and particularly the Gaza Strip as well with their bare chests and their hearts that are beating with love for Jerusalem, Palestine, and the sincere affiliation with them…
The occupation state wants to impose colonialist facts on the ground in Jerusalem and in all the land of our homeland, and for this purpose it is carrying out a crazy war, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian presence and the Arab and Islamic identity of our capital Jerusalem by stealing homes and real estate and unleashing the settler herds and their terror groups so that they will sow ruin and destruction and desecrate the holy sites.
But our proud heroic people and our young people who are carrying out Ribat in Jerusalem and its surroundings and everywhere there is an Arab, Muslim, or free person,has come out against this with its full heroism through its brave popular resistance (i.e., term used by Palestinians, which also refers to the use of violence and terror) to the occupation’s aggression against the Damascus Gate [of Jerusalem’s Old City], the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre…
In conclusion, I direct my words particularly to the US and Israel: We have had enough! Leave us alone! Get off our chests, get off our chests! We’ll continue to be a thorn in your sides and we won’t leave our homeland, we won’t leave our land. End the occupation of our land today. Today and not tomorrow…
If you want peace, if you want security, if you want calm, it will not come by force of weapons or oppression; it will not come in these ways. Let us reach a compromise. We will not suffer what we have been suffering any longer, and we will not be more tolerant than we have been, rather we will stand firmer and firmer and firmer than how we have stood, until we reach victory and liberation, and until we end the occupation of all our occupied land, and foremost among it Jerusalem.’”