Palestinian official slams ‘daily’ Israeli incursions into West Bank

Israel weakens the Palestinian Authority by storming the Occupied Palestinian Territories everyday then alleging that the Palestinian Authority is weak and incapable of exercising its control over its territories, Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hussein Al-Sheikh told Israeli website Walla News yesterday.

The official stressed that the PA cannot accept a reality in which “Israeli occupation forces storm the Palestinian territories every night and then ask the Palestinian Authority to work during the day against militants.”

He revealed that, in an effort to calm the situation, he proposed to the Israeli authorities that they would stop storming the Occupied Palestinian Territories for four months as a test period, but the Israelis rejected the offer.

Overnight raids by the Israeli army are a near-daily practice in the occupied West Bank. Israel claims that they are essential for intelligence purposes, but rights groups have slammed the practice, insisting that the goal is to oppress and intimidate the Palestinian population and increase state control.

Like military checkpoints and the illegal Separation Wall, insist critics, the raids are part of the DNA of the apartheid state.

READ: Israel preparing to operate armed drones in nightly raids in West Bank