Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (R) shake hands with visiting Chilean President Sebastian Pinera in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on June 27, 2019. (Xinhua/Office of the Presidency/Stringer)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday announced that a broad campaign to provide international protection for “the defenseless Palestinian people is about to launch.”

Abbas made the remarks during a joint meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee and his Fatah movement’s central committee that he chaired, the official Palestinian news agency reported.

“We will launch the campaign to put everyone before their legal and historical responsibilities to provide international protection for the defenseless Palestinian people in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza,” Abbas said at the meeting.

Abbas said that the campaign comes “to confront the racist practices of Israel, and in light of the formation of an extreme right-wing government,” adding that the time has come for the Palestinian people “to enjoy justice, fairness, and protection.”

Abbas’s statements come amid the ongoing tension in the West Bank between the Israeli army and the Palestinians.

According to official Palestinian statistics, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed since January. Meanwhile, since March, 27 Israelis have been killed in operations carried out by Palestinians in Israel.

Abbas considered the death of the sick prisoner, 50-year-old Nasser Abu Hamid, in an Israeli hospital Tuesday morning “an assassination and a full-fledged war crime,” as Israel “prevented his struggling mother and all his family members from visiting him throughout the years of his illness.”

Xinhua