Halting Israeli occupation the only way to restore hope for peace: ministry

Palestinians fishermen sort their haul of fish caught in their nets along a beach in Gaza City yesterday.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has said that halt of the crimes of the Israeli occupation forces and settlements is the only way to restore hope for peace. The ministry said, in a statement yesterday, that the Israeli government is taking advantage of the international silence and disregard for its violations and crimes, in order to implement its Judaisation and settlement projects, noting that the international community in general, and the US administration, in particular, must translate words into actions to protect the two-state solution and the chance to achieve peace and to put pressure on the occupation to stop settlement building, restore hope for a real peace process that ends the occupation and enables the Palestinian people to exercise their legitimate right to self-determination. The statement touched on the escalation of the attacks of the occupation army and settlers against Palestinian citizens, their land, towns, homes, and farms in the occupied West Bank, especially Jerusalem and the areas classified as “C”, including the Jordan Valley and “Masafer Yatta” in particular, amid the continued operations for “Israelisation”, Judaising of Jerusalem and changing its features and legal, historical and geographical reality. The statement stressed that the escalation of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people is not a coincidence, and is not the result of isolated individual attacks, but is rather part of the practical applications of the expansionist and racist policy of the occupation government, as these violations and crimes reveal its true face as it races against time to annex the West Bank, especially the large areas which are inhabited by a small number of Palestinian citizens, in an attempt to permanently close the door on the opportunity to embody an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Palestinian ministry considered that these violations and settlement crimes are a translation of the positions and statements of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of the Israeli entity that are hostile to peace and the rights of the Palestinian people, holding the Bennett government fully and directly responsible for these crimes and their consequences on the chance of achieving peace. The ministry warned the international community not to be dragged into the misleading slogans of the occupation government, which is trying to perpetuate the existing colonial occupation and gain time to swallow up more Palestinian land and Judaise it.