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'Hamas is bringing a Nakba on Gaza'

Arabs turn on Hamas as Abbas asks: what are you trying to achieve?

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The Arab world is increasingly turning against Hamas as the terror group rejected a ceasefire offer from Israel this week.

Commentators across the Middle East have lined up to accuse Hamas of bringing a "Nakba" (catastrophe) on the Palestinian people.

In a broadcast on the Palestinian Authority's television channel, Ibrahim Khreisheh, the Palestinian representative to the UN Human Rights Council, warned that the rocket attacks on Israel constituted a "crime against humanity". He added that while Israel warned Gazans about impending attacks, the rockets fired at Israeli civilians came with no such warning.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas last week called on Hamas to end its offensive and asked on Palestine TV: "What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?"

In one interview on Hamas's own television channel, spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri let slip: "We aren't leading our people today to destruction, we are leading our people to death."

In Egypt, talk show host Khaled Salah said: "Our people in Gaza must come to the realisation that such idiotic decision making… forces Gaza and its people… to pay a steep price."

Another Egyptian TV presenter, Ahmad Mousa, criticised Hamas Prime Minister Haniyeh and the Qassam rocket brigades for using civilians as human shields to launch their attacks.

"You are bringing another Nakba upon your people," he said.

Meanwhile, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have held back from pressuring the international community to act over the conflict, apparently content to see the Gaza jihadis eliminated. They see parallels with the growing threat posed by the Islamic State terror group which targets their own states.

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