UNITED NATIONS: Hanan Ashrawi, an executive committee member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, has described the deaths and injuries of Palestinians on Monday at the Gaza border as a “massacre”, by the Israeli army .

The veteran peace negotiator, who was at the UN headquarters on Wednesday to attend a meeting on the Palestinian issue, said “It is not Hamas which is responsible for the killing fields that Israel has carried out in Gaza.”

Rebutting US Ambas­sador Nikki Haley’s statement in the UN Security Council that Palestinian protesters pose a security threat to Israel, Ashrawi said: “The people who are on this march to return; these unarmed civilian protests against the moving of the American embassy…these are expressions of will by the Palestinian people, who are protesting, demonstrating on their own lands.”

“They are sending a message not just to Israel but also to the rest of the world that we are a people who are alive and we want to live, and we want our freedom and we want our rights. This is not a sort of incitement or instigation by Hamas.”

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2018