The Palestinian government is battling in all international circles to stop the Israeli occupation’s aggression against the Palestinian people and to secure the delivery of food and medicine to all areas of the Gaza Strip, especially the north.
“We are doing everything possible to save our people there,” today said Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting held in Ramallah, rejecting the establishment of temporary camps for the displaced, as the Israeli occupation army requests from international organizations.
“We want our people to return to their homes from which they were displaced,” he said. “In the history of Palestine, there is no such thing as temporary, as we learned from experience that temporary means permanent.”
The Prime Minister expressed regret that some countries are still calling for “Israel’s right to defend itself,” stressing that the aggressor has no right to self-defense. “Occupying other people’s lands is not self-defense. We are the victims,” he said.
He called on the United Nations and the European Union to parachute aid into the Gaza Strip, especially in the north, as was the case in various other parts in the world, and to open relief corridors to Gaza and not limit it to the Rafah crossing only.
The Prime Minister called for immediate implementation of Arab League decisions, especially those related to relief.
Talking about a water corridor between Cyprus and Gaza, as suggested by some countries, Shtayyeh said: “We want aid to arrive, but we do not accept the displacement of our people on deportation ships under the name of aid.”
Reacting to the statements of the Israeli Prime Minister, in which he opposed the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza and wanted to maintain the occupation for a long time, Shtayyeh said Netanyahu’s policy would bring calamity to them. The Gaza Strip is part of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. “We do not need anyone’s permission to help our people there,” he said.
Regarding the money that Israel deducted from the clearance fund, the Prime Minister stressed that there is intensive international effort and pressure on the occupying state to release the Palestinian money. “We realize that people need their salaries, but none of us accepts stopping aid, treatment, education, medicines, water and electricity bills, and the salaries that we pay to our people in Gaza. This is our money and we dispose of it according to the requirements of serving our people and their rights wherever they are. International pressure is focused, and I hope it will produce the desired results,” he said.
Shtayyeh said what is happening in al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is nothing other than a war crime, accusing Israel of turning a hospital with wounded and sick people into a military base. “Bombing hospitals, cutting off electricity, and preventing fuel from reaching them, can only be considered a war crime according to international humanitarian law,” he said.
“For Israel to consider al-Shifa Hospital as the capital of Gaza, and its fall means the fall of Gaza, is nothing but a justification for killing the wounded, the sick, the doctors, and the paramedics,” said the Prime Minister.
Source: WAFA
