The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said that the settlement attack aimed at Judaizing Jerusalem and attempting to obliterate its Palestinian Arab identity has witnessed a major escalation in the last four years under an American administration biased towards the occupation state.
The Foreign Ministry added in a press statement today, Saturday, that this settlement escalation against the holy city has doubled dangerously during the year 2020, especially during recent months, which witnessed a frantic settlement race, specifically since the results of the American elections became known.
She indicated that the Israeli government, headed by Netanyahu, has announced dozens of settlement projects in different areas of occupied East Jerusalem, with the aim of deepening the process of separating East Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, and completing the erasure of the line between East and West Jerusalem, with the aim of drawing the future of the city unilaterally through A huge network of settlement roads turns Palestinian neighborhoods and towns in Jerusalem into divergent islands separated from each other, drowning in a sea of ​​settlement.
She explained that the year 2020 witnessed the intensification of settlement projects in the southern and northern regions of the holy city, and the occupation government approved building thousands of settlement units in the southern region, specifically in the settlements of Har Homa, Givat Hamatos and Gilo, in order to complete the southern cordon. On the Holy City and separated from its Palestinian extension.
She pointed out that the occupation government announced a new settlement project in the north, to build thousands of settlement units in a new settlement neighborhood on the lands of Qalandia Airport, to continue drawing the northern settlement ring as part of the plan to separate East Jerusalem from its northern side from its Palestinian surroundings.
The Foreign Ministry affirmed that these settlement projects aim to undermine the chances of reaching an agreed solution for the future of the holy city, and to turn the two-state solution into an imaginary vision that cannot be embodied on the ground.
She indicated that settlement construction projects in the occupied capital were accompanied by large-scale operations to expel and displace citizens through various methods and methods, most notably the large-scale demolition of Palestinian homes and facilities, noting that the occupation authorities demolished more than 170 homes, which caused about 400 citizens to lose their shelters, without bothering For the exceptional circumstances imposed by the Corona pandemic.
The Foreign Ministry said: In addition to that, the occupation authorities have escalated the campaigns of arrests, deportations, field executions, the withdrawal of IDs, the leveling of lands, the separation of Jerusalem from the villages and towns surrounding the military checkpoints, and the attempts to strike the activity of Palestinian institutions in occupied Jerusalem, besieging and disrupting cultural and sporting activities, most notably the violation of freedom of education and the attempt to impose Israeli methods of control. Consciously of emerging generations.
She added that the exchange and integration of roles between the official Israeli institutions and settlement associations continued at an increasing pace, which contributed to the acceleration of the evacuation of citizens from their homes in the Palestinian neighborhoods of the Holy City, as is the case in the Old City and Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which is located on the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem, where it is planned. The occupation to establish a huge settlement project that includes hundreds of settlement units in the aforementioned neighborhood, as well as what the Batn Al-Hawa neighborhood is exposed to in the town of Silwan, south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, whose features continue to change campaigns through plans to establish settlement centers and headquarters on the homes of its original residents.
The Foreign Ministry indicated that the year 2020 was not different from previous years, with regard to the Palestinian neighborhoods and towns in Jerusalem, and night raids and harassment of citizens continued, and the most prominent of these pictures is what is happening in the town of Issawiya in occupied Jerusalem, which is exposed to daily night raids.
It indicated that the Islamic and Christian sanctities were also in the Israeli targeting circle, and the incursions of extremist Jewish groups into the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque multiplied and the attempts to expand the temporal division circle and the attempt to establish a state of spatial division of the Holy Haram and to build a "biblical city" inside the cemetery of the martyrs, in addition to Attacks on Christian holy sites, the latest of which was an attempt by a terrorist settler to burn the Church of Gethsemane.
The Foreign Ministry stressed that it follows the developments of this heinous aggression at all levels, Arab, Islamic, regional and international, and continues its political, diplomatic and international legal action to expose the crimes of the occupation and its settlers against the holy city, the capital of the State of Palestine, considering that the issue of Jerusalem was and is still the main title of this move.
She affirmed that the Jerusalem issue still receives the priority that deserves all the meetings held by Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki with his counterparts around the world, and in regional and international conferences, and in the letters he sent to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the President of the Security Council, the President of the General Assembly, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, The special rapporteurs, special procedures and contractual mechanisms at the Human Rights Council, the Director-General of UNESCO, the International Criminal Court, and the foreign ministers of states.
In its statement, the Foreign Ministry said that all occupation measures in Jerusalem are illegal and invalid and do not bear any legal effect on the nature and position of the city of Jerusalem, and that it will continue to work with the countries of the international community and the competent courts to bring everyone who commits war crimes and crimes against humanity against Jerusalem and its Palestinian owners to criminal justice. And international accountability.
It called on the international community, the United Nations and its competent bodies to assume their responsibilities in preserving the status of Jerusalem and protecting it from attempts to Judaize it, change its demographic character, falsify its historical and cultural legacy as the capital of the State of Palestine, protect the Christian and Islamic holy sites, implement the decisions of the international system regarding Jerusalem and protect its original Palestinian people from deportation, And impose sanctions on Israel, the occupying Power, for its illegal practices and crimes against the Holy City and the Palestinian people.
It believed that international failure to stand in the way of colonialism and injustice complicates the problem and undermines confidence in the seriousness of the international community in carrying out its tasks and responsibilities.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs saluted our steadfast people in occupied Jerusalem, who had taken upon themselves and with their modest capabilities the task of thwarting these Judaic colonial schemes.
