Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) is seeking to punish Israel for the war crimes it committed in the Gaza Strip, an official report said on Wednesday.
The official PNA Wafa news agency said in a report published on Wednesday that President Abbas said the PNA has called for launching an international investigation panel to punish Israel.
"We appealed to international war crimes courts and called for setting up a query to investigate these war crimes. We'll do our best to prove that Israel committed awful and disgusting crimes," said Abbas on Tuesday night.
The news agency said that Abbas made the statements in a meeting at his Ramallah headquarters with Palestinian intellectuals and politicians, reported Xinhua.
Israel had carried out a 22-day military assault on the Gaza Strip, which ended on Jan. 18. Around 1,400 people were killed and 5,500 wounded, almost half of them civilians, women and children.
Abbas slammed the Damascus-based leaders of Palestinian opposition groups, mainly Hamas politburo Khaled Meshaal, saying " they call for slaughtering the people, although their shoes weren' t dirtied by Gaza dust."
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and radical left-wing parties considered the end of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, which left death and severe destruction, as a victory for the Palestinians and their armed resistance.
"We represent the people, but we don't use the people's blood to achieve personal illusive victories," said Abbas, adding "We want to support our people to recover their wounds and establish their state."
He said "the Palestinian people won because of their patience and tremendous steadfastness before the fiercest Israeli aggression since the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948."