PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat slammed Israel’s official rejection of the upcoming French initiative as a ‘reaffirmation of the Israeli government’s decision to continue its crimes and violations’, in a press release published Thursday evening.
Earlier on Thursday, a statement from the office of the Prime Minister of Israel rejected the peace initiative, saying the ‘best way to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestinians is direct, bilateral negotiations.’
‘Any other diplomatic initiative distances the Palestinians from direct negotiations,’ the PM’s office said. Erekat responded by saying the ‘call for “bilateral negotiations” is not a call for the achievement of the two-state solution, but an attempt at legitimising its settlement enterprise and the imposition of an Apartheid regime.’
He added that Israel’s statement came ‘a few hours after Israeli officials confirmed to the Palestinian side that the Israeli government has decided to continue violating its obligations under the signed agreements, including the daily military raids in vast areas of the Occupied State of Palestine.’
The initiative in question was launched by the French in preparation for renewed peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leadership, the parameters of which are expected to be presented at a peace conference at the end of May.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu previously criticised the French initiative, reportedly saying last week: ‘Can anyone explain what this initiative is about? Even the French don’t know.’
The initiative was also criticised by Palestinian factions on Tuesday after it was announced that the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority was postponing the submission of a resolution against illegal Israeli settlements to the UN Security Council, to instead pursue the French initiative.
Netanyahu’s call on the Palestinian leadership for direct negotiations comes despite the failure of decades of negotiations to bring the Palestinians any closer to an independent and continuous state.
The Palestinian leadership across the political spectrum on Thursday issued official condemnations of the ‘execution’ of two Palestinian siblings shot dead by Israeli forces in Ramallah after an alleged stab attack the day before.
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’ cabinet denounced the silence of the international community after Israeli officers shot Maram Salih Hassan Abu Ismail and her younger brother Ibrahim at a military checkpoint, government spokesman Yousef Mahmoud said in a press release.
‘There is nothing that can justify the crime that has been committed against a pregnant mother and her brother,’ Yousef said, referring to the siblings, adding that the Israeli government has a ‘mafia-like mentality’.
Hamas leader Abdul Rahman Shadid for his part called on ‘intifada activists to exact a price from occupation forces for the crime in Qalandiya, and to deter the occupation from shedding more Palestinian blood.’
Twenty-four-year-old Maram and her 16-year-old brother Ibrahim were both shot dead after Israeli police said Maram threw a knife at an officer stationed at Qalandiya military checkpoint near Ramallah.
Witnesses to the incident told Ma’an the siblings were not carrying knives, and that the Israeli officer who first opened fire on Maram was stationed some 20 meters away behind a concrete block, arguing the two posed no threat at the time that they were shot down. Israeli officers reportedly unloaded at least 15 rounds into Maram’s body during the incident, according to witnesses.
Maram and Ibrahim were the first Palestinians to be shot dead by Israeli forces since Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi and Abd al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif were killed in Hebron after allegedly stabbing a soldier in late March.
Israel’s excessive use of force against Palestinians has brought allegations from local and international NGOs, senior UN officials and foreign leaders and prominent US congressmen, that Israeli forces regularly carry out unlawful killings.
Thursday’s condemnations by both Abbas’ cabinet and Hamas come despite a marked absence of Palestinian political leadership from a wave of unrest that spread across the occupied Palestinian territory in October.
The violence has left over 200 Palestinians dead, the majority of whom were shot dead while allegedly carrying out small-scale attacks on Israeli military forces without support or prior organisation from any party.
The void in leadership amid the recent spate of violence has raised frustrations among the Palestinian public towards the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in particular, who many see as facilitating Israel’s occupation through security coordination.
l Hamas’ military wing threatened in a rally on Thursday, to carry out future bomb attacks if Israel’s near-decade long siege on the Gaza Strip was not lifted. An al-Qassam Brigades spokesperson during a Hamas-organised event in the al-Saraya area of Gaza City said: ‘everyone must understand that no one can stop us from exploding (bombs) if the siege is not lifted.’
Deputy head of the movement Ismail Haniya also addressed the rally saying, ‘the siege of two million Palestinians in Gaza cannot continue,’ adding that, ‘patience has limits.’
Haniya emphasised that there can be no Palestinian state without Gaza, and warned anyone ‘who tries to mess with Gaza’s security.’ He reiterated his movement’s desire to hold national unity elections, affirming that Hamas supports joint national efforts and reconciliation.
Thursday’s rally featured a life-size cardboard model of a bus damaged by explosives, in reference to an explosion that detonated inside an Israeli bus in Jerusalem on April 18, leaving 20 injured and one Palestinian, suspected of carrying out the attack, killed after he succumbed to his wounds shortly after.
Hamas later claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the slain Palestinian youth had been one of its operatives. The Gaza Strip has been under a severe military blockade imposed by Israel since 2006. The blockade was imposed following the victory of Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian elections and the subsequent 2007 clashes between Fatah and Hamas, which left Hamas in control of the Strip and Fatah in control of the West Bank.
The blockade, combined with three consecutive Israeli military assaults on the coastal enclave in just six years, has left the strip’s 1.8 million residents cut off from the outside world in an area that the UN has estimated will be unlivable by 2020 if Israel’s siege continues.
• A Palestinian detainee entered his 57th day of a hunger strike on Thursday while in solitary confinement in Israel’s Ela prison in Beersheba. A resident of al-Fawwar refugee camp near Hebron, Sami Janazreh, 43, was initially detained in November and openly declared his hunger strike in March after the Israeli Authorities renewed his administrative detention – internment without trial or charge.
Prison authorities have since moved the hunger-striker between Israeli prisons as a way of pressuring him to end the strike, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS), before placing him in solitary confinement at the start of this week.
Janazreh’s health has continued to deteriorate since the end of March when he began suffering kidney, chest, and teeth pain, eventually having difficulty walking and experiencing permanent dizziness.
Last week Janazreh began suffering from seizures and was taken to a hospital to treat a wound after he fainted and injured his head. Upon his release on Monday, he was transferred back into solitary confinement at Ela prison.
Janazreh was recently appointed a hearing at the Israeli Supreme Court to be held on May 16th after an initial appeal was rejected earlier in April at the Ofer military court.
He is one of several Palestinian prisoners currently on hunger strike in an attempt to hold Israel accountable for its arbitrary arrest and detention of Palestinians.
According to prisoners’ rights group Addameer, there are currently 700 Palestinians being held in administrative detention. Israel’s policy of administrative detention allows for internment without charge or trial for six-month intervals that can be renewed indefinitely, and has been widely condemned by rights groups as representing a grave violation of human rights and contravening international law.
Palestinian journalist Muhammad al-Qiq last year came close to death during a more than 90-day strike against his detention, during which Israeli medics were accused of forcing treatment on the prisoner.
