On January 28, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett provocatively said he would not allow any talks leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state. “If there were talks with the Palestinians, there would be no government. I reject the creation of a Palestinian state. I will never allow political talks on the borders to be held,” the right-wing premier said.
On Monday and at the start of the weekly Palestinian cabinet meeting held in Ramallah, Shtayyeh hit back. He said such statements from the Israeli premier “prove to us and to the world the scale of extremism of” this occupying regime “and its positions hostile to peace and political negotiations with the Palestinians, as well as its rejection and the denial of the signed agreements.”
The Palestinian prime minister, whose remarks were carried by Palestine's official Wafa news agency, also said Israel’s statements and positions as well as actions “prove the validity of what we said that there is no partner on the Israeli side for peacemaking,” and that the current Israeli cabinet “is systematically destroying the possibility of establishing the State of Palestine.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, Shtayyeh called on the United States and the European Union (EU) to intervene and halt Israel’s plans in occupied East al-Quds, the capital of the future Palestinian state, which are aimed at occupying most of its land for the regime’s settlement expansion.
The Palestinian premier also noted that the Tel Aviv regime persists in demolishing Palestinian-owned homes in East al-Quds and displacing their residents, while many more houses and residential buildings are under the threat of demolition and their owners risk displacement.
Also on January 28, member of the Hamas political bureau Ezzat Al-Rishq condemned Bennett’s provocative remarks, saying that such statements are a slap to those who keep faith in negotiations with the Israeli occupation. The Hamas official stressed that the Palestinian state could be established through resistance and steadfastness. Al-Rishq said that Bennett’s comments only “reveals the reality of our enemy and his war on our people. It proves that those who run after an occupation-given Palestinian state are just chasing after a mirage.”
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds. All the settlements are illegal under international law as they are built on occupied land. The United Nations Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.
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