The Palestinian Authority (PA) retorts to remarks made by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett calling a Palestinian state “a terror state.”
In a statement on Sunday, Nabil Abu Rudeineh said “the occupation [itself] is the essence of terrorism,” the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported.
“The Palestinian state, with East al-Quds as its capital, is a state recognized by the countries of the world, and has been an observer member of the United Nations since November 29, 2012,” the statement added.
Palestinians, he added, were, therefore, needless of the Israeli official’s remarks to either justify or invalidate their rights.
“True peace” was only to be achieved through establishment of an end to the Israeli occupation of our lands and our sanctities, Abu Rudeineh noted.
Earlier, and, in what the spokesman denounced as Bennett’s expressing “the colonialist ideology that rejects peace and stability,” the Israeli prime minister had said establishment of a Palestinian state “means that very likely there will be established a terror state.”
The Israeli regime started proclaiming existence in 1948 after overrunning huge expanses of regional territories in a heavily Western-backed war.
The regime proceeded to seize more land, including the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, in a similar military campaign in 1967.
Ever since, the regime has been dotting the territory with hundreds of illegal settlements, which the international community has consistently refused to recognize due to their construction on occupied territory.