RAMALLAH, Friday, June 9, 2023 (WAFA) – Presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh stated today that Jerusalem and its holy sites along with Israeli colonial settlement construction are the major obstacles to peace.
Responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks that Israeli settlements do not represent an obstacle to peace, that it is the settlers’ right to return to the formerly evacuated settlement outpost of Homesh alongside his demand on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and that settlements are not constructed on Palestinian land, Abu Rudeineh considered these remarks are intended to mislead international public opinion.
He added in a press statement that it is Jerusalem along with its holy sites and colonial settlement construction that have been major stumbling block to peace, while stressing that the tracts of land on which settlements are constructed belong to the Palestinian people, and that the extremist far-right Israeli government was proceeding with the construction of colonial settlements to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital.
He affirmed that the return of supremacist settlers to the site of the formerly evacuated colonial outpost of Homesh, south of the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin, is in defiance of the resolutions of international legitimacy, the United Nations Security Council resolutions as well as for the US administration, which has to translate its statements of condemnation into practical steps that would bring to an end the Israeli government’s actions that are plunging the region into further instability and violence.
If the Israeli government truly seeks permanent peace, Abu Rudeineh concluded, it has to comply with the United Nations resolutions in line with the two-state solution based on the establishment of an independent Palestinian State within the borders of 4 June 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital, since this is the only way to achieve peace and guarantee stability and security in the region.
K.F.
