Palestinian Authority: Israeli escalation exacerbates tensions, destabilizes region

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has warned that Israel's inflammatory policies exacerbate tensions across the occupied territories and destabilize the entire region.

In a statement released on Thursday, the presidency blamed Israel's policies for escalating tensions in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Such policies include cold-blooded killing of Palestinians, violation of Palestinian rights, Judaization of al-Quds and desecration of al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy sites, as well as increasing settler violence, it said.

The Palestinian presidency slammed Israeli lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir of the Religious Zionism alliance and his right-wing supporters who have frequently sneaked into the flashpoint neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in the occupied East al-Quds over the past weeks.

The Palestinians have time and again condemned Ben Gvir’s visit as a “provocative and escalating move that threatens to ignite violence”. 

Elsewhere in the statement, the presidency strongly denounced the killing of at least two young Palestinians in a pre-dawn Israeli army incursion into the Jenin refugee camp.

Two Palestinians killed, over dozen injured in Israeli army raid on Jenin camp

At least two Palestinians have been killed and 15 others sustained injuries during confrontations with Israeli military forces at the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli provocations, raids, extrajudicial killings and settler attacks will plunge the region into a cycle of violence, it said.

The presidency touched on Israel's deliberate escalatory actions, saying they are not consistent with efforts toward ensuring calm during the upcoming fasting month of Ramadan.

The statement called on the United States and the international community to take immediate steps to rein in the Israeli regime.

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Palestine PM: Israeli escalation will have serious repercussions

Separately, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh warned of serious repercussions of the Israeli actions, saying they mark a new chapter in crimes committed against the Palestinian people.

He demanded the international community to swiftly put an end to terrorism by the Israeli regime and settlers against the defenseless Palestinians.

International human rights organizations in their recent reports have declared that Israeli actions “amount to war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which require accountability in the International Criminal Court,” he said.

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Palestine calls on the ICC to expedite an investigation into the crimes of the Tel Aviv regime and extremist Jewish settlers in the occupied lands, and bring perpetrators to justice.

Tensions have been running high across the Palestinian territories in recent months.  

On Tuesday night, a Palestinian man identified as Diaa Hamarsheh killed five people, including a policeman, before being shot dead in the ultra-orthodox town of Bnei Brak east of Tel Aviv.

On Sunday, two Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli security forces and wounded four others in a retaliatory shooting attack in the northern Israeli city of Hadera before being shot dead.

It followed an attack on March 22, when a Palestinian man was fatally shot over an alleged stabbing attack near a shopping center in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, which left four Israeli settlers dead.

The string of operations by Palestinians has left many Israeli settlers in fear of further tensions, while others have called for a strong reaction from the Tel Aviv regime.

Attacks on Palestinian communities have escalated as well. on Tuesday, Israeli settlers launched several attacks on Palestinians and their property.

Palestinian pres. spokesman: Israel undermining regional security, dragging region into religious war

Palestinian president

Uzi Dayan, a former Israeli military general, threatened the Palestinians with another Nakba or Catastrophe, when the ethnic cleansing of more than 700,000 Palestinians took place along with the destruction of more than 500 villages as Israel was created in 1948.

Palestinian resistance groups have said in a joint statement that the Palestinian nation is united in confronting the Israeli occupation, its settlement expansion activities as well as it racist policies.

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