Tel Aviv/Ramallah, 5 November 2023 (dpa/MIA) – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on meeting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ramallah on Sunday, the Palestinian News Agency (Wafa) reported.

Abbas also called for more aid and fuel to be allowed into the coastal area, which is under blockade by Israel.

He described Israel's military campaign to destroy Hamas as "genocide" perpetrated on Gaza Strip residents. Israel has rejected allegations of this kind.

Israel declared its plans to wipe out Hamas after its militants went on a brutal rampage through Israeli towns bordering Gaza, killing 1,400 people, many of them civilians, and taking 249 others hostage on October 7.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says 9,488 people have died in Gaza since the war started. Israel has largely sealed off Gaza and halted supplies of electricity, drinking water, fuel and food.

Abbas said that Palestinians should not be expelled from the Gaza Strip or from the West Bank, where there has been rising violence between Jewish settlers and Palestinians since the October 7 attacks by Hamas.

Peace and security could only be achieved through the ending of the Israeli occupation, he said.

Abbas said he was prepared to take "full responsibility" for the Gaza Strip, but only as part of a "package" comprising a comprehensive political solution for the West Bank and East Jerusalem as part of an autonomous Palestinian state.

Blinken's trip to the West Bank was the first since the current Israel-Gaza war erupted. He has engaged in a round of shuttle diplomacy through the region since the Hamas attacks.

Earlier this week, Blinken told a congressional hearing that "at some point what would make the most sense would be for an effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza."

Abbas's call for a two-state solution has been rejected by most of the current Israeli cabinet as a threat to the Jewish state. Hard-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet have called for the entire West Bank, and even for the Gaza Strip, to be annexed.

Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, forcing out Abbas' Fatah movement, which retains control over Palestinian areas in the West Bank.

Following a meeting with Blinken in Amman on Saturday, Arab states and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), an umbrella grouping and the self-styled representative body of all Palestinians, whether in Palestinian territories or outside, called for an "immediate and comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza without conditions" to provide humanitarian assistance to the people trapped there.

The United States is pushing rather for a temporary halt to the fighting, while rejecting a comprehensive ceasefire, charging that this would lead to Hamas retaining power and being able to repeat the October 7 massacre.