The international silence over the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip has encouraged it to blockade West Bank cities and villages, the Safa news agency reported a Palestinian official saying yesterday.
In a statement, Member of Parliament and head of the Popular Committee against the Israeli Siege Jamal Al-Khodari said that the occupation is “continuously practicing collective punishment” against the Palestinians, in addition to other forms of “aggressions, which are opposed by international laws and conventions.”
He stated that the Gaza Strip has been under continuous and strict Israeli siege for ten years, and now Nahalin village in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem has been under siege for six days. “This is an aggression against 13,000 residents living there,” he said.
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Al-Khodari also said: “The village is already encircled by Israeli settlements and recently the Israeli occupation escalated its aggression against it and increased sand barricades and troop numbers around and inside the village.”
“The Israeli occupation arrested hundreds of the villagers and isolating the village from the outside world. This obstructed education as teachers and students are unable to enter, leave or move within the village.”
He blamed the international community for its silence over the ten year Israeli blockade on Gaza; calling for urgent international measures to end the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
43% of #Gaza is engulfed by the “buffer zone” imposed by #Israel. The buffer zone even overlaps the densely populated…
Posted by Middle East Monitor on Tuesday, October 20, 2015