Palestinians evacuate a wounded girl from the rubble of a destroyed building in Gaza City’s Rimal residential district on May 16, 2021, following massive Israeli bombardment on the Hamas-controlled enclave. (Photo by AFP)

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has strongly condemned the United Arab Emirates foreign minister’s claims that the latest Israeli attacks on Palestinians are acts of violence between two parties.

These statements reveal once again the role that the Emirati regime plays in partnership, support and collusion with the Zionist entity, and legitimizes its barbaric aggression against Palestinian people and civilians, including children, women and elderly people in particular, the PFLP said in a statement.

The struggle of our Palestinian people, their resistance and martyrdom in the face of the Zionist occupation is at the core of Palestinians’, Arabs’ and the international community’s attention. Whoever adopts the narrative of the Occupation is a subordinate and humiliated, it added.

The PFLP, the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), also said Abu Dhabi has made a treacherous stab in the side of the Palestinian nation and the Arab world through its normalization of relations with the criminal Israeli regime.

The Palestinian organization called on Emirati citizens to put an end to the policies of the Abu Dhabi regime and its suspicious deals against Palestinian people and their cause as well as the Arab world and its interests.

On Friday, UAE Foreign Affairs Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan voiced his country’s concern over the escalation of violence without blaming Israel and called for a ceasefire and the start of a diplomatic dialogue.

The UAE calls on all parties to take immediate steps to commit to a ceasefire, initiate a political dialogue, and exercise maximum restraint, he said in a statement published by state news agency WAM.

UAE warn Hamas

The UAE also warned Hamas that its planned investment in the Gaza Strip may not move forward if the Palestinian resistance movement continues its retaliatory attacks against Israel.

We are still ready and willing to promote civil projects in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority and under UN management in Gaza, but our necessary condition is calm, an unnamed senior Emirati official told the Globes financial newspaper on Saturday.

In February, the UAE substantially cut back funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees following it normalization with Israel, in possible revenge for the Palestinians’ bitter condemnation of the move.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed agreements with bin Zayed and Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani during an official ceremony hosted by former US president Donald Trump at the White House on September 15 last year.

Palestinians, who seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital, view the deals as a betrayal of their cause.

Tensions escalated in Jerusalem al-Quds, the occupied West Bank and Gaza amid the planned expulsion of dozens of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, where illegal Israeli settlers are looking to take over the properties of Palestinian families.

At least 174 Palestinians, including 47 children and 29 women, have been killed in the Gaza Strip in the past week. Nearly 1,000 others have also been injured.

Also in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have killed at least 13 Palestinians.

The United Nations Security Council is due to meet later Sunday to discuss the situation after the US blocked an earlier session proposed by Russia and other countries on Friday.