Palestinian Presidency and Foreign Ministry criticize Bennett’s call on his army and police to use excessive force against Palestinian people

OCCUPIED AL-QUDS, May.18, (ST)- The Palestinian Presidency has warned against Israeli occupation’s storming of the northern West Bank city of Jenin and its refugee camp on a daily basis, the random arrests of dozens of people, allowing Jewish extremists to storm into the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, announcing the construction of thousands of settlement units in the Palestinian territories, and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s statements that called on his occupation army to murder and abuse Palestinian people.

The official spokesman for the presidency, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said on Wednesday that this escalation of acts by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people in terms of killing, arresting and storming aims to fuel the situation and create an atmosphere of violence and tension that we have repeatedly warned against it.”

He called on the US administration to break its silence and to intervene immediately to stop the Israeli occupation’s daily attacks on the Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps and to curb the occupation entity before it is too late, stressing that statements and condemnations alone are not enough.

Abu Rudeineh added that the occupation’s policy comes at a time when the whole world witnessed the Israeli occupation army’s killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the assault at her funeral, in addition to the attack on the funeral of Walid al-Sharif and the desecration of the cemetery, which confirms that this Israeli occupation does not care about all these international condemnations, nor the resolutions of the United Nations that have repeatedly stressed the need to provide international protection for the Palestinian people, to stop all forms of settlement activity as illegal and contrary to international law, and to end the occupation of all Palestinian lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Palestine.

He stressed that peace, security and stability will not prevail until the Palestinian people attain their legitimate rights in full.

In another development, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates criticized the statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Bennet in which he called on his army and police to use excessive force against the Palestinians wherever they are, saying such statements are incitement to violence against the Palestinian people.

The ministry said in a statement that Bennett’s remarks are a “direct incitement to escalate the situation and the cycle of violence, as well as an official Israeli admission that what the occupying forces and settlers are doing is a systematic Israeli policy directed from the top of the political hierarchy in the occupying country.”

It added: “These calls are issued by a racist colonial mentality that denies the existence of our Palestinian people and their right to their homeland, and replaces the culture of peace with the culture of hatred and the abolition of the other.”

The Foreign Ministry also criticized Bennett’s visit to two Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank yesterday and today, saying they “reflect Israeli persistence in legalizing, deepening, and expanding Israeli colonies in the territory of the State of Palestine in flagrant violation of international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the international legality (United Nations) and its resolutions.”

It stressed that all this is “a new proof of the absence of an Israeli peace partner and that the Israeli government’s stated policies and measures are racist and anti-peace and aim to undermine any opportunity to restore the political horizon for resolving the conflict on the basis of the principle of the two-state solution, and a deliberate sabotage for any regional and international effort to build trust between the Palestinian and Israeli sides.”

Moreover, scores of students were suffocated as Israeli occupation forces stormed into a university in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarm firing tear gas canisters inside the campus, according to WAFA News Agency.

The agency reported that heavily-armed Israeli soldiers broke into the campus of Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie, attacked students and fired tear gas canisters at them causing dozens of suffocation cases.  

Basma Qaddour