Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh urged during the weekly cabinet meeting held in Ramallah the international community and the United States, in particular, to work on ending the Israeli policies of persecution, racism, and ethnic cleansing committed against Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods with the aim of replacing them with settlers.

He said the Israeli occupation’s judicial system, which looked today into the issue of forcibly expelling Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, is a cover for the policies practiced by the occupation against the Palestinian people throughout the entire occupied territories, slamming such policies as a violation of international laws and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and citing the Human Rights Watch report which accused the Israeli authorities of committing crimes of apartheid against Palestinians.

He warned the Israeli authorities against its attempts to take control over Palestinian properties in Jerusalem by imposing the so-called settlement procedures that refer Jerusalemites who are living on their land and maintain their property to the so-called “Absentee Property Law”, to justify stripping them of their lands, seizing their property and evicting them from their homes.

Shtayyeh called on Israel, the occupying power, to stop the settlement procedures in Jerusalem because it has no right to do so.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency