RAMALLAH, April 11, 2018  (WAFA) – Israel denied on Wednesday entry of Ghanaian Member of Parliament Ras Mubarak to attend a conference planned in Ramallah, according to the Afro-Palestine Newswire Service.

Mubarak, from the NDC‘s Kumbungu party, was invited by the Palestinian Authority to give a speech at an Islamic conference in Ramallah planned to open on Wednesday.

According to Mubarak, Israeli authorities had issued a permit for him to enter the occupied Palestinian territories through the Allenby border crossing with Jordan. However, when Mubarak arrived at the border, Israeli authorities, which controls entry into the occupied territories, did not allow him.

Writing on his Facebook page, Mubarak, said denying him entry will not deter him and other Ghanaians from speaking out against Israel‘s brutal occupation of Palestine.

"Ghanaians will continue to support the cause of the Palestinian people," he said in the post he wrote from the Jordanian capital after he was turned back by Israel at the crossing.

"What is this rogue state [Israel] afraid of? The truth? That I would witness the occupation first hand and call them out for the terrorists they are?"

Mubarak - an active member of the Palestine solidarity movement in Ghana who recently led a pro-Palestine march in Accra - joins a growing list of African parliamentarians and dignitaries who have been critical of Israel and then denied entry into the Palestinian territories by Israel, said the Afro-Palestine Newswire Service:

"The politics of discrimination and apartheid should have no place to thrive in the 21st century. Alas, it is happening.  A state that‘s erroneously described as the only democracy in the Middle East treats international law and conventions with contempt, flouts them with increasing regularity and maintains a brutal military occupation [of Palestine] while the whole world looks on," wrote Mubarak.

M.K.