Palestinian President Abbas calls on Hamas to complete truce deal with Israel

President of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas has called on Hamas, to make haste in agreeing to a deal with Israel in order to save the Gaza Strip from Israel’s military offensive.

“We call on the Hamas movement to quickly complete a prisoner deal, to spare our Palestinian people from the calamity of another catastrophic event with dire consequences, no less dangerous than the Nakba of 1948,” Abbas said in a statement carried by the official Palestinian outlet Wafa.

The Nakba, or “catastrophe,” is an Arabic term referring to the displacement of Arabs during the establishment of the State of Israel and the War of Independence.

Abbas urged Hamas “to avoid dire consequences” of Israel’s ground invasion of Rafah, which would lead to thousands of victims, more suffering, and further displacement of the Palestinians. Anyone who disrupts the deal would be held responsible, Abbas said, as things are no longer tolerable.

The Wafa statement added that Abbas “called on the US administration and Arab brothers to work diligently to complete a prisoner deal as quickly as possible, in order to spare the Palestinian people the scourge of this devastating war,” referring to Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

Mediators have been working for weeks on a deal that would see the remaining hostages released by Hamas in stages in exchange for a truce.

Hamas, however, has refused to agree to any deal that does not guarantee the end of the war, while Israel says ending the war before Hamas is totally defeated is a nonstarter.