RAMALLAH, Tuesday, June 13, 2023 (WAFA) – Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh met today with his Lithuanian counterpart Ingrida Šimonytė at his office in Ramallah, where they discussed enhancing joint cooperation and advancing bilateral relations.
They discussed ways to push forward bilateral relations, particularly enhancing trade and academic exchange between universities, artificial intelligence, information and communication technology, empowering Women, waste recycling, and combating climate change.
Shtayyeh reviewed during the meeting the latest developments in the Palestinian territories, and the escalating Israeli measures, including the frequent and daily incursions into Palestinian areas, killings and arrests, and the seizure of lands in favor of settlement expansion.
"Out of its belief in international law and human rights, Europe must take measures against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and make it costly," noting that Israel reaps profits from its occupation of our lands and its exploitation of all natural resources and depriving us of them.
The Prime Minister stressed the need to not only label settlement products but to ban them altogether from EU markets.
Shtayyeh called on Lithuania to recognize the state of Palestine from a standpoint of faith in the two-state solution with the aim of protecting it amid the systematic Israeli destruction of the possibility of implementing it and to come out with a peace initiative based on the Arab Peace Initiative in order to end the occupation and establish the state of Palestine on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Shtayyeh stressed that the current Israeli government's program is based on erasing the 1967 borders, annexing the West Bank, and strengthening the settlement presence there, as many international institutions accused Israel of being an apartheid country.
For her part, Simonet affirmed her country's firm position in supporting the two-state solution and supporting the peace process in accordance with United Nations resolutions and international law.
T.R.
