A senior Palestinian official condemned international ”silence” on Israel’s latest operations in the West Bank, where the army again blockaded the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat overnight.
”We deplore the silence of the international community, that it does nothing to stop this aggression of Israel,” Palestinian cabinet secretary Ahmed Abdelrahman said on Monday.
Speaking from his Ramallah home near Arafat’s headquarters, he said he did not know how long the siege would last.
He accused the Israelis of seeking to destroy the Palestinian Authority and the dignity of the Palestinian people, but added, ”They will not succeed”.
Palestinian information minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo, for his part called on the United Nations and Arab countries to intervene immediately to ensure Israeli forces withdraw from Palestinian towns they have reoccupied.
”We demand a quick Arab meeting and an emergency session of the UN Security Council to take measures guaranteeing the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the non-reoccupation of the West Bank,” Abed Rabbo told Qatar’s Al-Jazeera television station.
The Israeli army, which has vowed to occupy Palestinian territory for as long as attacks on its people continue, currently control six of the eight major West Bank towns.
It seized Jenin, Qalqilya, Tulkarem, Bethlehem and Nablus last week before taking over Ramallah early on Monday.
The cities have been declared closed military areas and put under curfew. Villages and small towns surrounding the reoccupied towns were also seized.
”It’s a serious development, an attempt to impose a new fait accompli,” Abed Rabbo warned.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government wants to ”reoccupy the whole of the West Bank and undermine the security, civil and military institutions of the Palestinian Authority to
install a regime of military administration” in Palestinian towns, he said.
Faruq Qaddumi, head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s political department, who acts as the Palestinian foreign minister, blamed Washington for a comment in Khartoum, where he is heading the Palestinian delegation at a meeting of the organisation of the Islamic Conference opening on Tuesday.
”The United States should be dissuading Israel but is instead helping to escalate tension in the Middle East by encouraging Israeli terrorist practices against the Palestinians,” Qaddumi said. – Sapa-AFP