The State of Palestine calls on the international community to take immediate, concrete measures to hold Israeli officials accountable for their crimes and continual incitement and threats to commit crimes against the Palestinian people, today said the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates.
“The very existence of the Palestinian people in their homeland is being threatened and requires urgent action in line with international law to hold Israeli government and military officials and settlers responsible for their crimes and to deter further violations,” it said in a statement.
“Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Finance of Israel, must be sanctioned and held accountable for inciting violence and destruction and knowingly leading and contributing to the mass persecution of the Palestinian people,” it said, adding, “The State of Palestine warns that Israel’s systematic hate speech, provocative rhetoric, violence and dehumanization of the Palestinian people across decades are fomenting mass violence at levels that remind of the destruction visited upon Palestinians in the Nakba of 1948.”
The Foreign Ministry said that clearly overjoyed by the carnage and terrorism wrought by settlers in Hawara, Smotrich’s fascism is neither a “slip of the tongue” nor an aberration.
“Smotrich’s incitement is the inevitable culmination of 75 years of Israeli hate-mongering, rooted in the Nakba and sustained by Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid regime of Jewish supremacy which institutionally relegates the Palestinian people to inhuman status. Only the end of Israel’s occupation and the dismantlement of its apartheid regime will end this violence, racism and fascism against the Palestinian people.”
If not accompanied by action for accountability, said the Foreign Ministry, statements of condemnation will not suffice. “Urgent international intervention is needed to curb Israel’s dangerous aggressions against the Palestinian people and to provide the necessary protection,” it said, calling on the international community to uphold responsibilities and obligations in accordance with international law and enact tangible and effective measures against Israeli officials for the crimes being perpetrated against the Palestinian people.
“There can be no shared values with a war criminal. Allowing Smotrich, to visit the United States, and any other country, is a direct endorsement of incitement that is bent on the destruction of the Palestinian people and should not be supported by any means,” the Ministry concluded its statement.
Source: Palestine News & Information Agency