Palestinian authorities have condemned recent remarks by Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennet regarding the ongoing violence in the occupied West Bank, saying they are a green light for killing Palestinians.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said on Sunday that the Tel Aviv regime is fully and directly responsible for Israeli premier’s “hateful” statements and their consequences, after he ruled out any limits for the ongoing conflict in the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestine’s Wafa news agency reported.
“Bennett did not stop at launching the military machine of destruction, but rather went on misleading the world public opinion by stating that the occupying state was moving from a state of self-defense to a state of attack, in a blatant disregard of the fact that Israel is already occupying the land of the State of Palestine,” the ministry said.
The ministry further called on the international community and human rights organizations to take Bennett's remarks seriously, stressing that they “account for an official Israeli permit to practice extrajudicial killings, and are a flagrant violation of international law.”
The ministry also called on the United States to take these inflammatory statements seriously, given the fact that Washington continues to defend the occupying regime and its racist colonial system.
The latest development came after Bennet said in a statement on Friday that “There are not and will not be limits for this war. We are granting full freedom of action to the army, the Shin Bet [domestic intelligence agency] and all security forces in order to defeat the terror,” referring to Israeli brutal raids in northern West Bank.
Israeli forces have launched large-scale attacks in the West Bank city of Jenin, following a shooting operation by a young Palestinian in a crowded entertainment area of Tel Aviv.
On Thursday evening, a Palestinian youth, identified as Ra’ad Fathi Hazem, entered a pub on a crowded main street of Tel Aviv and began shooting, killing three Israelis and wounding more than a dozen others.
The 28-year-old, a resident of the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, was killed by Israeli forces in a pre-dawn firefight near a mosque on the first Friday of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
Hamas called the attack a “heroic operation” and vowed that “resistance” against the Israeli regime “is continuing and escalating.”
Following the heroic operation, Bennett granted “all security forces full freedom” of operations in a bid to give a sense of security to local people.
The regime in Tel Aviv has escalated its crackdown on Palestinians since the beginning of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, arresting a number of Palestinians in occupied East al-Quds, desecrating al-Aqsa mosque, issuing new restrictions on the Palestinian people’s entry into the mosque, and ordering the demolition of Palestinian homes and agricultural facilities.
The Israeli violence, repeated on a daily basis, has led to fierce clashes between Israelis and Palestinians across the occupied territories.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has already warned Israel against pushing forward with its open aggression against Palestinians, particularly Muslim worshipers at the al-Aqsa mosque compound during Ramadan.