Urgent and effective international intervention needed to stop the crimes of the Israeli occupation and its armed settler militias
Press Release: Urgent and effective international intervention needed to stop the crimes of the Israeli occupation and its armed settler militias
The General Delegation of Palestine strongly condemns the violations and crimes committed by Israeli colonial settler militias and their armed terrorist factions against defenceless Palestinian civilians throughout the occupied West Bank. Israeli settler terrorists, protected and abetted by Israeli occupation forces, have been targeting unarmed Palestinians with live gunfire and systematically burning Palestinian homes and vehicles, showing an appalling disregard for civilian lives. This is happening at a time when Israel, the occupying power, is continuing to escalate its genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Extreme and widespread incitement by the most radical settlers has led to a surge in settler violence, aiming to commit further atrocities against the Palestinians and increase the fragmentation of the West Bank. Israeli settler violence has already reached unprecedented levels with the support and encouragement of the Israeli occupation government and military, who continue to provide these extremist groups with impunity and protection. This is intended not only to accelerate Israel’s creeping annexation of the West Bank, but also to escalate the current situation in an attempt to sabotage ongoing international efforts to resolve the conflict politically, and to undermine prospects for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
The government of Israel and the extreme right-wing coalition are fully and directly responsible for these provocative and violent actions, which are an extension of the occupation's supremacist and racist ideology that denies the very existence of the Palestinian people and their inalienable right to self-determination.
The General Delegation of Palestine calls on the international community, including Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Pacific countries, to urgently intervene to compel the Israeli government to halt all illegal settlement activities, dismantle armed settler organizations and militias, withdraw their weapons, stop their funding, and punish those who stand behind them and provide them with protection and support.
It is time for binding international sanctions to be imposed on the entirety of Israel’s illegal and illegitimate colonial settlement system, and for urgent international protection to be provided for the Palestinian people.