Palestinian Foreign Affairs calls on the international community to stop Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing

Al-Anbat - Sarah Al Armouti

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed that the international community's failure to respond to Palestinian demands for immediate action to protect the two-State solution has a devastating impact on the conflict and opportunities for its resolution, and gives the occupying Power more time to pounce on the remaining opportunities.

In a press statement on Sunday, she said that the failure to respond also reflected clear double standards and a failure to respect international commitments to the suffering of the Palestinian people and relevant United Nations resolutions.

Palestinian foreign affairs condemned the occupying Power's daily and ongoing crime of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian presence in the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in all areas classified as (c), including the pursuit and prosecution of any form of Palestinian presence in those areas, house demolitions, the destruction of economic and agricultural installations and continued attacks on educational institutions, and destruction and repression of citizens.

On Sunday, Israeli occupation authorities forced a Jerusalem citizen from the occupied Jerusalem Old City to demolish his home, on the pretext of not being authorized by the occupation municipality. According to the People's Committee for Resisting Settlement in the Old City, a Jerusalem citizen had begun forcibly demolishing his house in the Bab Hata neighbourhood of Jerusalem's Old Town, in order to avoid fines for the occupying authorities in the event of the demolition of its machinery, estimated at shekel 50,000 ($ 15 thousand).

Some 4 years earlier, the citizen had built a room next to his home, which had been stranded with his wife and five children, but the occupation municipality had warned him to self-demolish or pay for the demolition, after four years in the occupation courts to obtain a permit for the added room.

On the other hand, the Israeli occupying forces seized a solar unit in Yatta, south of Hebron, south of the occupied West Bank.

The Coordinator of the Protection and Resilience Committees in Yatta and the mountains south of Hebron, Fouad al-Amor, stated that the occupying forces had taken over a solar unit in the Sha 'b al-Butm area of Yatta, belonging to a citizen and used to generate electricity.

The occupying forces prevent citizens in those areas from building and establishing electricity and drinking water systems. They aim at destroying all the infrastructure that would strengthen citizens' resilience in those areas targeted by settlement. The occupation aims to pressure the population and force them to leave their homes and land in favour of its settlement expansion.

On Sunday, Israeli occupying forces also notified that they had placed a hand on land in the village of "Barqa", west of Nablus.

Ghassan Daghlas, the official in charge of the settlement file in the northern West Bank, said that the occupation forces handed a notice of seizure of land measuring 720 meters from Basin 20 belonging to citizens of Barqa.