Barghouti: Palestinians will not accept anyone’s ‘guardianship’

Palestinians will not accept “the continued Israeli occupation of their land, nor any guardianship from any external party over the Gaza Strip,” Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, stressed yesterday.

In an interview with Quds Press, Barghouti said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to impose military and security control over the Gaza Strip for an “indefinite period” means re-occupying the Strip from within after years of imposing an external siege on it.

“Talk about external guardianship over the Gaza Strip aims to give legitimacy to the Israeli occupation, exempt it from responsibility for the humanitarian needs of those under occupation, and shift it to another party,” he added.

Barghouti stressed that “what is required is not to expand the existing [Israeli] occupation of the West Bank with a complete occupation of the Gaza Strip, but rather to end the occupation, which was and continues to be the cause of all tragedies in the region and provide the Palestinian people with the opportunity to implement their right to self-determination and establish their free and independent state.”

He stressed that the real intention of Israel’s rulers who continue to commit war crimes and massacres is “to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people, in Gaza or the West Bank, and annex it to Israel according to the map that Netanyahu presented to the United Nations in front of the whole world, which includes the West Bank and Gaza as well as the occupied Golan Height.”

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