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PLO: Time to end dark chapter of apartheid

October 4, 2017 at 11:28 am

Secretary-General of the PLO Saeb Erekat yesterday condemned the Israeli occupation’s policy against Palestinian land and people for the past nine months saying it is time to end this era of “apartheid”, Safa News Agency reported.

In a statement, Erekat said that the illegal Israeli annexation of the Palestinian land and building settlements deprives the Palestinians of their rights and is erasing the chances of a viable Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

He added that Israel has allowed settlement expansion, made soldiers and settlers immune from prosecution when they attack Palestinians, carried out enforced displacement, destroyed homes, carried out daily raids and terrorised unarmed Palestinians all over the occupied West Bank.

Erekat reiterated that the Israeli occupation has been working to erase the Arabic and Palestinian identity of the occupied Palestinian capital in order to replace Arabs with Jews. Israel has isolated East Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied West Bank and maintains its military control over it.

Read: Separate and unequal: How Israel segregates its own citizens inside the Green Line

“Since the start of this year, Israel has accelerated illegal settlement construction in East Jerusalem and its surroundings,” he said, noting that 1,600 new settlement units have been approved in the illegal settlements in the occupied city.

He also condemned the recent Israeli announcement that it would evacuate Khan Al-Ahmar village to the east of Jerusalem to advance its projects in E1 area.