RAMALLAH, Monday, June 3, 2024 (WAFA) –The Palestinian presidency said that Palestinian people are paying the price of the Israeli war, stressing that they are the first to be affected by this war, which sheds their blood, and has resulted, since last October 7, in the killing of more than 36,000 Palestinians, wounding 83,000 others, the destruction of infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, mosques, and churches, displacing thousands of citizens, and exterminating hundreds of families.

This came in response to Ali Khamenei's statements, in which he said, “This war shuffled the cards at a sensitive moment in which the enemy was seeking to implement a plan to control the region, and it was necessary for the region, and everyone should not pin their hopes on the ceasefire agreement in Gaza.”

The Presidency added that these statements, which clearly declare that their goal is to sacrifice Palestinian blood and thousands of children, women and the elderly, and to destroy Palestinian land, will not lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Palestinian people have been fighting and struggling for a hundred years, and they do not need wars that do not serve their ambitions for freedom and independence, and the preservation of Jerusalem and its Islamic and Christian sanctities.

“What we want is to end the occupation and embody our independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and not policies that do not serve the Palestinian national goals, which are represented by the liberation of Jerusalem and its sanctities, and destroy the Palestinian people and displace them from the land whose identity they have struggled to preserve, generation after generation,” the Presidency added.

The Presidency stressed that "we are in a continuous confrontation alone with Israel, and with successive US administrations that constantly use the veto to prevent Palestinians from obtaining their legitimate rights, and are trying to remove Jerusalem from the equation, provide weapons and money to maintain the Israeli occupation, and prevent the raising of the Palestinian flag over Jerusalem and the holy sites."

K.T