Palestine FM: Global silence emboldens Israel to commit crimes

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki said yesterday that the international community’s failure to hold the Israeli occupation accountable for its crimes encourages it to keep committing more atrocities against Palestinians.

Speaking during an extraordinary meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, at the request of Pakistan and Palestine, to discuss the current situation in the Palestinian territories, Al-Maliki added: “Israel is an occupying power and it has duties, and we reject the flimsy arguments and the treatment of the victim and the perpetrator as equals.”

He continued: “There is no justice without fairness for the victims among our Palestinian people and accountability for Israeli war criminals. There will be no peace without ending the occupation.”

He asserted: “If the international community wants to end the suffering of the Palestinian people, it must confront, isolate and boycott this apparatus, ban its products, along with penalising the companies that work with it, in addition to imposing economic and political sanctions on it.”

He referred to Israel’s daily practices in the city of Jerusalem, accusing the occupation of establishing “a colonial system based on forced displacement of the Palestinians in Jerusalem, and replacing them with settlers in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan in order to Judaise the holy city.”

Some 300 Palestinians face forcible transfer out of their homes in occupied Sheikh Jarrah along with a further two families in Silwan, to make way for illegal settlers.

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