Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh (C) speaks at the opening of a weekly cabinet session in the central occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on September 12, 2022.  (Photo by Wafa news agency)

Ramallah, September 14 (RHC)-- Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has warned that the intensified Israeli military crackdown in the occupied territories will inevitably push the West Bank to the verge of a major explosion, arguing that Israeli factions are fueling the violence for the sake of their own political interests.

Israel is hiding behind the absence of a political horizon and the world’s preoccupation with the fallout of the Ukraine conflict.  The legislative elections, which will be held on November 1, cannot cover up the Israeli regime’s crimes, Shtayyeh said at the opening of a weekly cabinet session in the central West Bank city of Ramallah.

He called on the international community to wake up and look at what Israel is doing to the “oppressed and occupied” Palestinian nation.  The senior Palestinian official went on to note that Israel has left nothing of the Oslo Accords.

“It has canceled and disregarded most of its provisions, and abolished its political, economic, and geographic annexes, refrained from negotiating the final status issues, continued with its unilateral measures, such as the settlements, continued with the financial deductions in violation of the agreement, and stopped the release of the fourth batch of prisoners, which was supposed to include Karim Younis and others, and sick prisoners, in violation of the agreement,” he said.

“Israel has violated and even canceled most of the terms of the agreements signed with us, and this requires us to stop and think about this issue,” Shtayyeh said.

The Palestinian prime minister pointed out that Israel falsely claims that it wants to strengthen the position of the Palestinian Authority, but is indeed weakening the government body and destroying its institutions.

“We say to Israel: We do not want your support.  We want our national rights.  We want this occupation to end, and we want international legality to prevail and international law to be in full effect,” Shtayyeh highlighted.

“Our people will not accept the continuation of aggression against our land, youth, and people,” he said, calling for an end to the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, recurrent acts of aggression against al-Quds, and the regime’s settlements expansion activities.

Israeli forces continue their near-daily raid-and-arrest operations in various parts of the West Bank, wounding or killing Palestinians.  Such raids are carried out while Israeli settlers also conduct acts of violence against Palestinians and their property. 

More than 70 Palestinians, including 37 Palestinian children, have been killed so far this year, many as a result of the use of lethal force by the Israeli authorities in a manner described by the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Territories as a violation of international human rights law.