THE first deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) has said that Palestinian national reconciliation could not be achieved amid the continued security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).
During Friday’s Khutbah (Islamic sermon) in a mosque in Gaza City, Ahmad Muhammad Bahr said that the current national conflict has stemmed from the Oslo peace agreement and the resulting security coordination between the PA and Israel.
Bahr cited the recent incident of Palestinian prisoner Samer Odeh in the Tulkarem district of the occupied West Bank who was detained by the PA and turned over to Israeli authorities after escaping from an Israeli hospital.
Bahr highlighted that any Palestinian reconciliation should be formed in accordance with the principles of Palestinian resistance and not in the framework of security agreements with Israel, adding that such coordination has caused ‘conflicts among Palestinians’.
Bahr called for an immediate stop to the security coordination and for the PA to support the Palestinian resistance, reiterating that popular resistance is the only way to ‘liberate Palestinian lands’. He also called upon all Palestinian factions to unify against Israel, ‘the only enemy of Palestine’, and to adopt and embrace resistance, saying that the ‘Israeli occupation only speaks the language of force.’
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) released a statement on Friday in response to the Trump administration’s comments earlier in the day that Israeli settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land ‘is not an impediment to peace,’ and encouraged the Palestinian Authority (PA) to withdraw recognition of the Israeli state, while escalating the boycott of Israeli goods.
The DFLP statement said that the Palestinian leadership should ‘stop hesitating’ and begin conducting actions in response to Netanyahu’s settlement policies which are supported by the US. The White House said in a statement on Friday that ‘while we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving (peace)’.
The DFLP has threatened to withdraw recognition of the state of Israel and to focus energy on the decisions of the Palestinian Central Council to internationalise the rights of Palestinians, adding that the latest US statement on Israeli settlements is ‘foreshadowing new dangers and a new escalation in the region and especially in the occupied Palestinian territories’.
The statement also highlighted that Netanyahu has dramatically increased settlement expansion plans in the two weeks following the inauguration of right-wing Donald Trump to the position of US President. In January, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu pledged to lift all restrictions on settlement construction in occupied East Jerusalem and to advance settlement expansion in the West Bank.
More than 6,000 housing units have been approved for construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank by the Israeli government since the beginning of 2017. Netanyahu also said last Wednesday evening that he had taken preliminary steps to establish a new illegal settlement in the West Bank to house Amona settlers amid resistance from the outpost’s residents as Israeli authorities attempted to evacuate the outpost – considered illegal under both Israeli and international law.
Meanwhile, last Tuesday, the Israeli government gave its approval for the construction of more than 3,000 new illegal settlement homes across the occupied West Bank just hours after the widely condemned ‘Legalisation Bill’, which would retroactively legalise dozens of illegal Israeli outposts, passed its final committee vote.
The DFLP statement also added that amid US support of Israeli settlements and the election of Trump who has publicly expressed his support for illegal settlement building, any planned decisions expected to be carried out by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in order to combat settlement expansion would be too late to challenge Netanyahu’s commitment to pushing through Israeli settlement plans.
The DFLP urged the PA to withdraw recognition of the state of Israel, cancel the Israeli-Palestinian security coordination, publicly support and practise the boycotting of the Israeli economy, and to support the Palestinian popular resistance. The statement also highlighted the importance of internationalising the Palestinian struggle at the UNSC and demanded that countries conduct themselves in accordance with UNSC resolution 2334.
The DFLP also encouraged Palestinian leaders to appeal to the International Criminal Court, a move that the US government has said would result in the cutting of aid to the PA and the re-labelling of Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as a terrorist organisation.
The goal of Palestinian leaders should be to isolate the Israeli state, the statement continued, which practises ‘ethnic cleansing, sieges, ethnic separation, and collective punishment against the Palestinian people’.
The statement concluded by demanding the PA to continue organising at the UN to obtain complete membership for Palestine and for the UN to provide protection to Palestinians. However, the statement added, the PA would need to end the national conflict and unite all political parties, while defending Palestinian lands.
Late Friday Israeli forces assaulted an elderly woman, her son and grandson in the Old City of the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. Palestinian security sources said that Israeli soldiers had broken into the home of Fatima Natsheh, 70, in the Old City, and proceeded to assault her and her son Hasan, 35, and grandson Falah, 23.
They said that soldiers used the butt of their guns to hit them, causing injuries that necessitated treatment at the hospital. Mistreatment of Palestinians in the Hebron area has been common since the city was divided in 1997 under the Oslo agreements. The majority of the city was placed under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, while the Old City and surrounding areas were placed under Israeli military control, known as H2.
The area is home to 30,000 Palestinians and around 800 Israeli settlers who live under the protection of Israeli forces. Hebron residents frequently report attacks and harassment by the settlers, carried out in the presence of the forces. Israeli forces have reportedly finished a ten-kilometre section of the Israeli separation wall in the south of Hebron, Hebrew-language media reported on Saturday.
Hebrew-language site Walla reported that the order to complete the wall in the area came as a punitive response to a deadly shooting attack in Tel Aviv carried out in June last year by Palestinians from the village of Yatta in Hebron. According to Walla, the plan was set by the Israeli Defence Ministry and states that the separation wall would start from the Tarqumiya checkpoint in western Hebron to the Meter checkpoint in the south.
The wall is 42-kilometres long and is erected on the side of bypass road 35, constructed for the use of settlers illegally residing in Palestinian territory to connect them with Israel. The wall is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year, according to Walla.
Israel began building the separation wall with concrete slabs, fences, and barbed-wire inside the occupied West Bank in 2002 at the height of the Second Intifada, claiming it was crucial for security.
The ICJ issued an advisory opinion in 2004 stating that the wall was illegal under international law and its construction must stop immediately, adding that reparations should be paid to Palestinians whose properties were damaged as a result of the construction.
Twelve years later, the construction of the wall has continued unabated as more than 62% of the construction has been completed, encroaching deep into the Palestinian territory, leaving Palestinian neighbourhoods stranded on both sides of the barrier, and isolating communities from their agricultural lands.
When complete, the majority of the wall’s construction, 85%, will have been built inside the occupied Palestinian territory over the Green Line, consuming vast tracts of Palestinian land along its way and consuming land in Area C – the two-thirds of the the West Bank that are under full Israeli military and civil control – where illegal settlements have been built or are planned to be constructed in the future.
