PM Mohammad Shtayyeh during launching of CEAPAD 4th conference in Jericho. (WAFA Images)

RAMALLAH, Wednesday, July 03, 2019 (WAFA) – Prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said the convening of the Conference on Cooperation among East Asian Countries for Palestinian Development (CEAPAD) for the first time in Palestine comes at a sensitive time and in response to the US-led Bahrain workshop, stressing that those who want to help us must fall in line with the Palestinian agenda, stating that politics cannot be separated from economy.

Shtayyeh said during the launching of CEAPAD fourth conference in the city of Jericho that our priority is to  end the occupation. Economic development is a supportive tool to the Palestinian agenda to end the occupation and those who want to provide assistance to Palestine must see it from this perspective, he said.

He said that Israelis are stealing Palestinian land and now they are stealing Palestinian money, in reference to the withholding of millions of dollars from the Palestinian tax clearance revenues. “We have asked the international community to scrutinize the Israeli deduction of the PA tax revenues and we hope they take the matter seriously,” he said.

The PM said that “there are a group in Washington who believe that by suffocating us they will force us to surrender and accept the US so-called ‘deal of the century’, and we say to them that Palestinians will not be defeated nor surrender and will not accept anything but their national rights.”

Meanwhile, CEAPAD delegation visited Jericho’s industrial zone, which is financed by Japan.

T.R./M.K.