Aha Dua Permata: Palestinian leader rejected Biden phone call

Saturday 21 October 2023

Palestinian leader rejected Biden phone call – media

Mahmoud Abbas meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Amman, Jordan, October 17, 2023
©AP/Jacquelyn Martin

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused to hold a phone call with US President Joe Biden during the latter’s visit to Israel on Wednesday, Israeli state media reported on Friday.

Citing a Palestinian source in the West Bank, the Kan news agency said that Biden’s team had attempted to arrange a conversation between the leaders, but Abbas rejected the request.

Biden and Abbas did speak by phone on Saturday, with the US president pledging to support efforts to “bring urgently needed humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people,” according to a readout of the call provided by the White House.

The two leaders were set to meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Jordan on Wednesday. However, the summit was canceled by the Jordanian side after a deadly explosion at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital hospital in Gaza the night before.

The Israelis and Palestinians blamed each other for the blast, which the Palestinian Health Ministry claimed killed around 500 people. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi sided with the Palestinians, accusing Israel of attacking the hospital in what he called “a heinous war crime.”

With the summit scrapped, Biden spent Wednesday in Israel, where he publicly endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that the hospital was hit by a wayward Palestinian rocket.

Egypt will host a summit in Cairo on Saturday to address the ongoing war. Abbas is expected to attend, along with multiple Gulf and European leaders, and representatives from the EU. American and Israeli officials will not attend the gathering.

Lavrov explains how truth about Gaza hospital strike can be established

The US could publish satellite images of Gaza taken during a deadly strike on one of its hospitals, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday. The high-profile tragedy that took place earlier this week saw Palestinian militant groups and the Israeli military trading blame for the incident. America could clear this situation up if it wanted to, the Russian diplomat believes.

“Now, when everyone is talking about the Gaza tragedy, in which a hospital was attacked and hundreds of people died … one could ask the Americans for the satellite data,” Lavrov told Russia 1, adding that Washington “must surely be monitoring this area with its satellites.”

FILE PHOTO: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
©Sputnik/Russian Foreign Ministry

“An attack like this could not have gone unnoticed,” the minister said, adding that a goodwill move on the part of the US could make the world a “calmer place.” Lavrov criticized US officials for focusing their attention on Moscow’s dealings with Pyongyang instead.

Earlier this week, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claimed that North Korea had supposedly sent around 1,000 containers of “equipment and munitions” to Russia between early September and early October.

A London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank published what it called satellite images allegedly proving Russia had received munitions from North Korea. According to RUSI, the photos were specifically taken by a US-based private company, Planet Labs, which owns a fleet of satellites equipped with powerful telescopes and cameras.

The same company pictured the Israeli heavy equipment deployed to Gaza’s northern border, according to several media reports published this week. AP reported on Friday that another US-based company, Maxar Technologies, had taken satellite images of the aftermath of the Israeli strikes on Gaza.

Iran’s Tasnim news outlet claimed in its exclusive report on Tuesday that the US and France had been helping the Israeli military by providing imagery taken by a total of 27 satellites monitoring Gaza from the early stages of West Jerusalem’s operation against Hamas.

The strike on the hospital in question took place late on Tuesday and killed around 500 people, according to Gaza health officials. Many Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Türkiye, and Jordan, have blamed the Israeli military for bombing the health facility.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has strongly denied responsibility, claiming the strike came from a failed rocket launched by Islamic Jihad. Washington supported West Jerusalem by also blaming Palestinian militants.

Russia has demanded a thorough and impartial investigation that would bring all those responsible to justice.