RAMALLAH, Thursday, April 2, 2020 (WAFA) – Foreign and Expatriates Ministry today slammed Israel’s statements linking any assistance it might offer for the besieged Gaza Strip’s efforts against coronavirus with the recovery of two soldiers who went missing during the 2014 onslaught in the enclave.
“The Ministry slams Israeli ‘Defence’ Minister Naftali Bennett’s statements suggesting the possibility of preventing the delivery of coronavirus testing strips into the besieged enclave as a bargaining chip in efforts to recover the two soldiers as cheap blackmail, particularly at the time of this plight facing the entire humanity,” the ministry said in a press statement.
It noted that this stance of the Israeli occupation authorities’ leaders was not new, especially that their actions and behaviors towards the Palestinian people during the coronavirus pandemic have been driven by racism and malice.
This was mostly manifest, the ministry elaborated, in Israel’s attempts to undermine Palestinian official efforts to battle the coronavirus pandemic, dumping Palestinian workers at checkpoints after displaying symptoms of the novel coronavirus, the Israeli Prison Service’s failure to protect prisoners against the imminent virus spread and take necessary precautionary measures, such as supplying them with hygiene necessities, and maintaining the 14-years crippling siege on Gaza.
The ministry held the Israeli government fully responsible for the implications of the Israeli-imposed siege on Gaza and failure to ensure the safety and well-being of Gaza population, and urged the international community to intervene to help Gaza secure the supplies necessary to battle the deadly virus.
“The moment there is talk of the humanitarian world in Gaza – Israel also has humanitarian needs, which are mainly the recovery of the fallen,” Bennett told reporters, referring to an infantry officer and conscript who were killed in the 2014 war and their remains kept by Hamas.
“And I think that we need to enter a broad dialogue about Gaza’s and our humanitarian needs. It would not be right to disconnect these things … and certainly, our hearts would be open to many things.”
Two million Palestinians live the Gaza Strip, which has been subjected to a punishing and crippling Israeli blockade for 12 years and repeated onslaughts that have heavily damaged much of the enclave’s infrastructure.
Gaza’s 2-million population remains under “remote control” occupation and a strict siege, which has destroyed the local economy, strangled Palestinian livelihoods, plunged them into unprecedented rates of unemployment and poverty, and cut off from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories and the wider world.
Gaza remains occupied territory, having no control over its borders, territorial waters or airspace. Meanwhile, Israel upholds very few of its responsibilities as the occupying power, failing to provide for the basic needs of Palestinian civilians living in the territory.
Every two in three Palestinians in Gaza is a refugee from lands inside what is now Israel. That government forbids them from exercising their right to return as enshrined in international law because they are not Jews.
K.F.
