RAMALLAH, September 19, 2018 (WAFA) – The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) strongly condemned on Wednesday Israel’s murder of six Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the last 24 hours, accusing Israeli forces of deliberately targeting the Palestinians.
“The deliberate murder of six Palestinians by Israeli forces in the last twenty-four hours is yet another escalation in the Israeli occupation‘s brutality and inhumanity,” said PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi.
Muhammad Zaghloul Rimawi, 24, from the occupied West Bank village of Beit Rima, was brutally attacked and beaten to death in front of his family by Israeli occupation soldiers in the middle of the night. Unarmed Muhammad Yousef Alayan, 26, from the Qalandiya refugee camp was shot in cold blood by Israeli forces for defending himself against an Israeli settler in occupied East Jerusalem.
Muhammad Ahmad Abu Naji, 34, and Ahmad Muhammad Muhsin Omar, 20, were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in the northern besieged Gaza Strip while peacefully participating in a demonstration against Israel’s unlawful 11-year blockade of the Gaza Strip. Naji Jamil Abu Assi, 18, and Alaa Ziyad Abu Assi, 21, were shelled and killed in an airstrike on the southern Gaza Strip on Monday night.
“Emboldened by the total support of the US administration, Israel has stepped up its criminality and policy of summary executions targeting Palestine’s innocent victims with deliberate cruelty and impunity,” said Ashrawi in a statement.
“The international community is urged to end Israel’s devaluation of Palestinian lives and to abandon its double standard when it comes to the loss of life, regardless of nationality or religion.”
The PLO official appealed to the International Criminal Court (ICC0 in The Hague “to take immediate action and open an official and criminal investigation into such widespread and flagrant war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed throughout occupied Palestine.”
She also called on the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention and the United Nations “to investigate Israel’s egregious violations, lawlessness and provocative acts and hold it accountable with punitive measures and sanctions.”
Ashrawi stressed that the murders were “further proof that the Palestinians require urgent protection from Israel’s criminal campaign and decades-long military occupation.”
However, she added, “the real solution remains in ending the occupation and enabling the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self-determination in a free and sovereign state on their own land with Jerusalem as its capital.”
M.K.
