PALESTINE’S UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour has called on the UN Security Council to ensure ‘protection’ for Palestinians, who have increasingly come under deadly attacks by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Speaking to reporters after a closed-door UNSC meeting on Tuesday, Mansour said it was incumbent on the 15-member body to intervene and ‘elevate itself to the level of taking steps’ amid heightened Israeli violence.
‘Protection, protection, protection is what the Palestinian civilian population are asking for,’ he added.
‘We believe that the Security Council has a responsibility to shoulder, especially with regard to … taking steps to provide protection to the civilian population, especially after the criminal and terrorist act by settlers in Huwara and nearby villages.’
On Sunday night, hundreds of armed Israeli settlers, flanked by soldiers, attacked Palestinian villages near the West Bank town of Huwara and set fire to homes, storefronts and cars.
At least one Palestinian was killed and nearly 400 were wounded in the hours-long rampage, which was denounced by Israeli rights groups Peace Now and B’Tselem as a settler ‘pogrom’ supported by the occupying regime.
Meanwhile the Arab League holds Israel fully responsible for the deadly settler rampage in the occupied West Bank.
Also in his remarks, Mansour said it would have been helpful for Security Council representatives to visit Huwara so they could ‘see with their own eyes (and) feel the horror in the minds and hearts of children and mothers and their families.’
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has called for ‘international intervention’ against Israeli crimes.
‘We hold the occupation authorities fully responsible for these heinous crimes, which reflect a systematic policy practiced by the Israeli government, whose ministers demonstrate their support for those crimes in violation of international laws,’ he said in a statement.
Yesterday the Israeli army continued to besiege the occupied West Bank city of Jericho for the third consecutive day. Israeli forces continued to erect checkpoints and barricades at all the main and secondary entrances leading to the city, preventing people from leaving and entering it.
Photos and video footages on social media platforms show Palestinians waiting in a long queues at the checkpoints on the outskirts of the city.
As part of the movement restrictions imposed on the city, a checkpoint was erected close to al-Karameh border crossing, also known as Allenby, east of the city, another close to Aqabat Jaber refugee camp, southwest of the city, two others to the east of the city, in addition to several others blocking secondary roads.
The movement restrictions in place have resulted in blocking the access of Palestinians seeking to travel to Jordan through al-Karameh border crossing, the only land crossing for Palestinians between the occupied West Bank and Jordan.
On Sunday night, hundreds of settlers attacked Palestinian villages and towns in the northern West Bank.
Settlers completely burnt down at least 35 homes and 40 others were partially damaged, and many of the buildings were set on fire while their Palestinian inhabitants sheltered inside. More than 100 cars were burnt or otherwise destroyed.
Thousands of Palestinians in Israel demonstrated on Tuesday night in the Arab town of Sakhnin in northern Israel in protest against the pogrom committed by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank, particularly in the town of Hawara, south of Nablus, and its neighbouring villages.
In the face of these Nazi-style attacks, the UK’s powerful Trade Union Congress has disgraced itself by not lifting a finger to help the Palestinians. The millions of members of the TUC affiliated unions must demand that the TUC condemns the Israeli pogroms, that all trade with Israel is banned and that an international fund is launched to assist in the organisation of the State of Palestine.
