By Awad Rajoob
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - The Palestinian presidency said Saturday that leaks about Washington discussing plans for the Gaza Strip with unnamed parties “will not have any legitimacy” and emphasized that “the priority is to halt the aggression against Gaza.”
Presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said in a statement by the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA, that Israel persists in "its crimes against the Palestinian people and their land, exceeding international legitimacy due to the blind and unjustified support from the American administration, which provides Israel with financial and military aid."
Rudeina said Israel’s presence in Gaza and the West Bank is illegitimate, in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who dismissed an International Court of Justice's advisory opinion on the occupation's illegality and Palestinian self-determination.
Recent reports indicate that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant discussed a post-war plan with US officials that involves international oversight and a trained Palestinian security force.
Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas.
More than 38,900 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 89,600 injured, according to local health authorities.
Over nine months into the Israeli onslaught, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
* Writing by Ikram Kouachi