PM Shtayyeh calls on UN to dispatch teams to monitor Israeli settlers’ actions in the occupied territories

RAMALLAH, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh today called on the United Nations to dispatch teams to the occupied Palestinian territories to monitor actions by Israeli settlers against the Palestinian civilian population, particularly during the current olive harvest season.

He stressed that terrorism by Israeli settlers against Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank who are harvesting their olive crops will not frighten them because they are the true owners of the land.

Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting held in Ramallah, the Prime Minister called on the United Nations to establish a database of settlers involved in these acts of terrorism in order to prosecute them, stressing that terrorizing farmers and preventing them from harvesting their olive crops will not deter them from reaching their land and proceeding in the harvest.

He said that the building of a bus station for settlers south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus on a large area of Palestinian land is only another step to annex these lands in violation of international law.

The Prime Minister welcomed the US insistence on reopening its consulate in occupied Arab Jerusalem closed by the former US administration and merged with the US embassy that was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in violation of international law, emphasizing that Jerusalem is an occupied land and what applies to the rest of the Palestinian territories under international law applies to it as well.

He said that reopening of the consulate, as stated by the US Secretary of State, is an important matter and a promise the United States has made, expressing hope that this will occur soon despite claims by the Israeli government it is operating on shaky grounds and that reopening the consulate could undermine it.

“It cannot be and is unacceptable to enable (the Israeli government) at the expense of Palestinian right in violation of international law,” he said.

“The world’s response to the settlement project, which is intensifying on a daily basis, must be by recognizing the State of Palestine,” stressed the Prime Minister, accusing Israel of not only demolishing homes of Palestinians while they are alive, but also demolishing graves of dead Palestinians, as in the case in the excavations official Israeli parties are undertaking in al-Yusufiya cemetery in East Jerusalem.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

RECENT POSTS