Its president Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas today stressed the need for an international peace conference to end the war between Israel and Hamas and find a viable political solution leading to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

In an interview he gave to the Reuters news agency from his office in Ramallahthe 87-year-old Abbas said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had reached an alarming stage, making an international conference and guarantees from foreign powers imperative.

In addition to Israel’s military operations against Hamas in Gaza Strippointed out that since the beginning of the year the Israeli forces have intensified their attacks in the occupied West Bank and there is an increase in violent incidents with Jewish settlers as protagonists.

He reiterated his support for negotiations, distancing himself from armed resistance to end the long Israeli occupation. “I am in favor of peaceful resistance. I am in favor of negotiations through a peace conference under international auspices, which would lead to a solution with foreign powers as guarantors for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state that will include the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” the Palestinian leader stressed.

Mahmoud Abbas spoke to Reuters as Israel steps up its attacks on the Gaza Strip. More have been killed in two months of war of 17,000 Palestinians and another 46,000 have been injured. About 1.9 million people have been forced to flee their homes and more than half have sought refuge in the central part of the Palestinian enclave or near the Egyptian border.

Israel has launched its military operations aimed at disbanding Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, after an unprecedented attack launched by its militants on Israeli soil on the 7th of Octoberin which 1,200 people were killed and approximately 240 hostages were taken.

Abbas stressed that a binding international agreement would revitalize the weakened Palestinian Authority, allowing for long-awaited reforms and the holding of presidential and parliamentary elections, which were suspended after Hamas’s 2006 victory forced its officials out of Gaza.

He underlined that the Palestinian Authority has respected all the peace agreements signed with Israel since the Oslo Accords (1993), but the Israeli side has broken its commitments to end the occupation.

Asked if he would risk holding an election given the possibility of Hamas winning it, as it did in 2006, he said: “No matter who wins it, it will be a democratic election.” Mahmoud Abbas said he planned elections in April 2021, but the European Union envoy informed him that Israel opposed holding them in East Jerusalem, so he was forced to cancel them.

He insisted that no elections could be held except in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and then annexed, declaring the entire city its capital, which is not recognized internationally. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

Abbas did not mention the post-war plan he discussed with US officials, under which the Palestinian Authority would take control of the Gaza Strip, home to about 2.3 million people. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will not accept the Palestinian Authority’s rule of Gaza in its current form.

“The US has told us that it supports the two-state solution, that Israel will not be allowed to occupy Gaza, control security in Gaza or expropriate Gaza lands,” Abbas said, commenting on Israel’s plan to create a zone security in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave after the end of the war. “America does not force Israel to implement what it says,” added the Palestinian leader.

He said the Palestinian Authority is still institutionally present in the Gaza Strip and pays salaries and expenses totaling $140 million. The Palestinian Authority is represented by three ministers in Gaza, he clarified. “We need more support to return to Gaza,” he added.

“Gaza today is not the Gaza you knew. Gaza was destroyed. Its hospitals, its schools, its infrastructure, its buildings and roads, its mosques have been destroyed. There’s nothing left. When we get back, we’ll need resources. Gaza needs reconstruction,” he stressed.

“The United States, which fully supports Israel, is responsible for what is happening in the enclave,” Abbas claimed. “It is the only power that can order Israel to stop the war and fulfill its obligations, but unfortunately it does not. America is an accomplice of Israel,” said the Palestinian Authority president.