LONDON

Israel will be unable to remove Palestinians from Gaza because they are deeply rooted in the land, as Israel has tried but failed to do in the past, said Palestine's envoy to the UK on Wednesday.

Ambassador Husam Zomlot, speaking at the 156th Trade Union Congress (TUC) in the seaside resort city of Brighton, said Palestinians are too resilient to be broken.

"Despite the genocide, despite the ethnic cleansing, despite all the horrors, we are too rooted, like the roots of our ancient olive trees, we are too rooted to be removed from our land," he asserted.

Zomlot said: "We have done it before, they could not erase us completely in 1948, they could not crush us in 1967, they did not wipe us out in Lebanon in 1982 and despite the horrors in Gaza, they will not erase us from Gaza."

He went on to say that Palestinians "will survive this, will rise again and will rebuild Gaza, adding: "As we have been, we will remain in Gaza."

Zomlot touched on the number of unaccompanied children whose family members have been killed in Israeli attacks and 800,000 students who are without education for the second year in a row.

"What of the future? And that tells you it's a genocide, because Israel is not only targeting our present, it is targeting our future. You know how? Education, because they know that our lifeline, our life blood, is education," he added.