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PA: Palestinians paying price of UNSC’s inability to implement its decisions

April 26, 2021 at 11:43 am

Palestinians protest outside the UNSCO building in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on 23 April 2019 [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]

The Palestinian people are paying the price of the UN Security Council’s inability to implement its resolutions in relation to putting an end to the Israeli occupation and illegal settlements, Al Watan Voice reported the Palestinian Authority (PA) saying yesterday.

In a statement, the PA’s Foreign Ministry said: “The inability of the UN Security Council to carry out its work as stipulated in the UN Convention, and its failure to implement its decisions related to the situation in the Middle East and the Palestinian issue in particular, turns it into a forum that does not abide by its responsibilities as the highest international body responsible for preserving international peace and security.”

The PA also condemned the Israeli occupation forces and settler attacks against Palestinians in the occupied territories, particularly in Jerusalem.

According to the statement, the PA considered such attacks an extension of the Israeli colonial enterprise which aims to annex Jerusalem after evacuating it from its indigenous residents, in addition to maintaining ‘Area C’ of the occupied West Bank as a “strategic reserve” for settlement expansion.

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Meanwhile, the PA condemned Israel’s violent crackdown on the peaceful popular protests staged in Jerusalem and other Palestinian cities, considering this “a flagrant violation of the principles of the international humanitarian law and basic human rights, on top of which the right to defend oneself, right to free access to places of worship, right to live in dignity and right to free movement.”

The statement stated that the ongoing violence against Jerusalemites reflects “the culture of hate, violence, denial of Palestinians right to their lands and home.”

Concluding the statement, the PA’s Foreign Ministry said what Jerusalem is experiencing “sums up the dark ideology of the Israeli occupation which is based on denying the Palestinian existence in the Old City and other Islamic and Christian old neighbourhoods of the holy city.”

More than 100 Palestinians have been injured since Thursday after Israeli occupation forces used force to disperse unarmed demonstrators in occupied East Jerusalem.