Palestinians face various forms of Israeli war, says PA prime minister

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Wednesday that the people of occupied Palestine are facing Israeli aggression and continuous war in various forms, Wafa news agency has reported.

Shtayyeh’s comments were made during his meeting with the EU Special Representative for Human Rights, Eamonn Gilmour, in Ramallah. The EU’s representative to Palestine, Sven Kuhn von Burgsdorff, also attended the meeting.

“The Israeli occupation deprives our people of their most basic rights, as it places restrictions on movement with military checkpoints and walls, denies us our right to elections, seizes our lands, demolishes homes and displaces their residents,” said Shtayyeh. “How long will the international silence continue towards what is happening here in Palestine in terms of violations and measures [imposed by] the occupation?”

The PA official called for an end to the double standards of policies towards the Palestinians and their cause, and for Israel to be held to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people.

“Since the beginning of this year, more than 160 Palestinians, including 28 children and six women, have been killed by the occupation forces and settlers, and Israel continues to keep the remains of hundreds of martyrs in refrigerators and numbered graves,” he explained.

Since 1967, Shtayyeh added, Israel has uprooted 2.5 million trees on Palestinian land, including 800,000 olive trees.

“There are now 751,000 settlers in the West Bank, and the occupation government wants to raise their number to about one million at the expense of our land, water and the life of our children,” he said. All of Israel’s settlements and the settlers who live in them are illegal under international law.

In closing, he called on the EU and the international community to put pressure on Israel to obtain “our right to hold elections in all Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem.”

READ: US calls on Israel to stop use of ‘deadly force’ against Palestinians