RAMALLAH, February 24, 2012 (WAFA) - The Palestinian government Friday warned that policies and actions of the Israeli government will kill the two-state solution.
“The Palestinian government warns that the policies and actions of the (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu government seriously prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state due to an irreversible mechanism working daily to create, and altering, facts on the ground in the form of territory, jurisdiction, and development,” said a statement by the Palestinian government’s spokesman’s office.
“While the Israeli government tirelessly talks about wanting peace and returning to the negotiations table, it is aggressively working on preventing any of the fundamental issues to be negotiated through irreversible facts that obliterate the viability of the two-state solution and the creation of the state of Palestine on 1967 territories,” it said.
The statement specifically criticized an Israeli plan to build 500 new housing units in Shilo settlement, north of Ramallah, as well as retroactively approving the building of 200 units in another illegal West Bank settlement.
It described this decision as “a stark indication of Israel’s policy to continue occupying the West Bank.”
According to the statement, “Shilo is located in the heart of the West Bank and is not even one of the settlements near the Green Line that Israel usually expands on the pretext of an eventual land swap—which is also unacceptable. Moreover, while the Israeli occupation enthusiastically demolishes Palestinian homes and structures (already 100 since beginning of 2012), it approves settler building that is illegal according to Israel’s construction laws—a clear indication how the oppressive Israeli occupation is also racist and never works on creating the fundamentals of trust- and peace-building.”
The statement also criticized an Israeli plan to handover Jerusalem’s Qalandia airport to the jurisdiction of the West Jerusalem municipality in order to transform it into an industrial zone.
It described this decision as “both illegal and a severe blow to maintaining the status quo of occupied East Jerusalem.”
It demanded that Israel must return the airport, which was functioning before the 1967 Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, to Palestinian Authority jurisdiction.
“In order for any negotiated effort to succeed, Israel must not change any facts in Jerusalem. It is illegal, regardless of any Israeli due process, to appropriate the occupied airport to Israel,” said the government statement.
“The laws of the Israeli occupier continuously legalizes what is in contravention with international law and signed agreements through new settlement activity, strengthening control of occupied Jerusalem in a manner that reveals Israel’s determination not to relinquish 1967 occupied territory that are the basis for negotiating a two-state solution,” it said.
“The international community needs not to be baffled by the Israeli government’s sweet talk and seriously review the occupation’s belligerent actions,” concluded the statement.
M.S.
