International apathy to Palestinian sufferings encourages Israeli aggression: Foreign ministry

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has censured international apathy towards the sufferings of Palestinian people, arguing that such a practice has encouraged Israeli occupation forces and settlers to “carry out more attacks against defenseless Palestinians.”

The ministry, in a statement released on Saturday, called on the international community, the UN Security Council and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to employ international protection mechanism for the Palestinian nation “before it is too late.”

It held Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fully responsible for the recent uptick in settlers’ attacks against Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank.

Earlier in the day, a group of Israeli settlers attacked local residents in the northern West Bank village of Burin, located 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) southwest of Nablus, as they were picking olives, forcing them to leave their land.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official in charge of monitoring Israel's settlement expansion activities, told the Palestinian Arabic-language Safa news agency that people from Yitzhar settlement, which lies south of Nablus, attacked a Palestinian family as they were harvesting the produce.

Daghlas added that the Palestinians had to leave the area in the face of the large number of settlers.

More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.

PressTV-Israel confiscates more Palestinian land in West Bank

Israeli authorities have announced the confiscation of hundreds of acres of private Palestinian land in the southern part of the occupied West Bank.

Less than a month before US President Donald Trump took office, the United Nations Security Council in December 2016 adopted Resolution 2334, calling on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem” al-Quds.

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued settlement expansion on Palestinian territories.

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