"The unilateral military operation carried out by Hamas (...) gave Israel more pretexts and justifications for attacking the Gaza Strip," Abbas said at the Arab League summit in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, quoted by the French news agency AFP. Abbas was referring to the unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023, which caused about 1,200 deaths and two hundred hostages, according to Israel. The attack triggered the current war between Israel and Hamas, with an Israeli military offensive that killed more than 35,200 people in the Gaza Strip, according to an updated report today by the extremist group's government. Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, when it expelled Abbas's Fatah party from the Palestinian enclave after armed conflicts between the two sides following Hamas's victory in the 2006 elections. Abbas said in Manama that Hamas's refusal to end the internal division "served Israel's plan", before October 7, to "perpetuate the separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank and Jerusalem". It also served to "prevent the creation of a Palestinian State and weaken the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization", he said, according to the Spanish news agency Europa Press. Abbas said that "the main priority is to end the aggression" against Gaza and bring more humanitarian aid to the territory, as well as "preventing the displacement of people from Gaza or the West Bank". He also defended as a priority "immediately starting to implement the two-state solution", according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. "For more than seven months, Israel's genocidal war has killed tens of thousands of children, women and men of our people in the Gaza Strip", he said. The Palestinian leader stated that the Israeli offensive caused more than 120,000 deaths and injuries, "most of them women and children". Abbas also called on Arab countries to "review relations" with Israel and make their continuation conditional on the end of the "open war against the Palestinian people", according to the Spanish news agency EFE. At the opening of the summit, King Hamad bin Issa Al Khalifa of Bahrain called for the organization of an international conference for peace in the Middle East. He also called for support "for full recognition of the State of Palestine and its accession to the United Nations". Invited to the summit, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the war in the Gaza Strip as "an open wound that threatens to infect the entire region". Guterres reiterated the call for "the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages" in Hamas's possession and called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. "Any offensive on Rafah is unacceptable", added the former Portuguese Prime Minister. Read Also: Hezbollah launches rockets against Israeli military positions (Portuguese version)