PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Photo: wiki commons.

Mahmoud Abbas spoke at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul on Tuesday, where he did what he does best: he tried to hijack and transform the summit into yet another anti-Israel vehicle. He also resorted to his failsafe mechanism of lying on a grand scale.

Here is the beginning of his speech:

 We emphasize our support and our commitment to the responsibilities set out in the agenda of the Secretary-General for this humanitarian summit. In Palestine, our people and leadership seek with all our will and determination to end the suffering of our people, through peaceful means, since the question of Palestine and its people has been here for nearly seventy years. More than half of our people have been wrongfully displaced from our homeland, and are still waiting for a solution, Our people will not accept to remain under occupation, nor consistently in the current situation, which humiliate our freedom and humanity and dignity and basic rights.

We need to ensure the presence of collective international political will to implement the resolutions of international legitimacy, which calls for a comprehensive and just political solution to the Palestinian issue, as the basis for putting an end to the tragedy of the Palestinian people of all its aspects, which was implemented beginning in 1917, and has lasted until the present day.

If the Palestinian tragedy began in 1917, and it is time to end it “in all its aspects,” then Abbas is calling for the modern state of Israel to be retroactively erased from history. This is not a call to end “occupation” — it is a call to end the entire concept of a Jewish state and for the world to apologize for even thinking that the Jewish people have any rights as a people.

Abbas also told the summit that he wanted to save thousands of Syrian refugees, but that Israel refused to allow them to come. The truth is the opposite according to Abbas’ own words from a few years ago.

 Abbas told a group of Egyptian journalists in Cairo late Wednesday that Ban contacted Israel on his behalf.

Abbas said Ban was told Israel “agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee … sign a statement that he doesn’t have the right of return (to Israel).”

“So we rejected that and said it’s better they die in Syria than give up their right of return,” Abbas told the group.

As far as I know, no reporter has ever asked Abbas about his support, in his own words, for letting thousands of people die in Syria in order to further his desire to destroy Israel.