In his speech before the Turkish legislature, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pledged that he is prepared to take profound risks to visit the Gaza Strip. President Abbas is in Turkey to hold sensitive meetings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the issue of Gaza.
On Saturday, he declared to the Assembly, ‘I will go to Gaza together with other leaders of the Palestinian Authority’, which caused applause among Turkish deputies. “I will do this even if it costs my life. The lives of our children are more important than mine,” he said in an emphatic show of support for the Palestinian cause.
Abbas’s visit to Turkey comes after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. In his earlier speech, he stated that the Palestinians will not accept a territorial split solution for Gaza and the West Bank, which has been the case since 2007. “Gaza is an inseparable part of our land… As a matter of fact, a Palestinian state cannot be viable without Gaza… Our people will not give up,” he announced.
During the talks in Ankara, the sides concentrated on the growing aggressiveness of the actions; according to Erdogan’s press service, the sides discussed “the massacres perpetrated by Israel in the Palestinian territories” and identified the measures needed to achieve further stability and peace in the region.
This is an important context of Abbas’s diplomacy, which is carrying its efforts amid rising tensions, especially after the assassination of the Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh, to trigger the Iranian backlash, which could spark the regional escalation of the conflict. Currently heading the Palestinian Authority, which has been sidelined since the October 7 attack that sparked this war, Abbas runs his administration in the city of Ramallah.
Of particular importance is that President Abbas also heads the Fatah party, which developed a severe confrontation with Hamas, particularly after Hamas won the parliamentary election of 2006 and thus began a confrontation with the Fatah militia.
